Public Services Management Group Quarterly Reports
October 2006
Collections:
Annex: The Library Annex continues to receive, accession and shelve 2000 volumes each day. (Cammie Hoffmier)
Asia Collections: Steady growth; no changes of note. (Bronwen Bledsoe)
Catherwood Library: Effective 1 September 06, Deb Schmidle assumed her new assignment as Social Science Coordinator in the IRIS Department of Collections, Reference, Instruction, and Outreach (CRIO). In the short term, Deb Lamb-Deans will handle collection development at Catherwood. Richard Strassberg, the Kheel Center director, is chairing a committee charged with developing a three year plan for the management of Kheel Center digital assets. The report is due by 1 November 06 and the committee is comprised of Barb Morley, Patrizia Sione, Laura Robinson (ILR Technology Services), Mary Newhart, and David DeMello (ILR Web Studios). (Gordon Law)
Collections, Reference, Instruction, & Outreach (CRIO): Significant expansion of the New Books Shelf is planned for the fall break. CRIO will provide space out of its reference collection to accommodate three presses of New Olin Acquisitions. Fred Muratori, Michale Engle, Lance Heidig, and Kornelia Tancheva are involved in the process.
Several librarians assumed collection development responsibility for the areas formerly covered by Janie Harris:
Economics: Deb Schmidle
Psychology: Nan Hyland (Mann)
Government: Sarah How
Higher Education: Camille Andrews (Mann)
Social Sciences, General: Deb Schmidle
Sociology: Deb Schmidle
Urban Studies: Kornelia Tancheva
New in this arrangement is the role of librarians at Mann in selecting material for the Olin stacks. Nan Hyland and Camille Andrews are selecting for Olin in areas that mesh well with existing Mann collection development activity. Michael Engle is working with Nan to maximize our outreach efforts to the Dept. of Psychology.
CRIO selectors continued the review process for moving non-circulating single-volume monographs, published 1851-1930, to the Annex.
Wanda Wawro, selector for Slavic and post-Soviet, East and Central European Studies, traveled to Palo Alto, California, to assess and accept a large gift of primarily Bulgarian and Serbian books dating back to the mid-19th century. (Kornelia Tancheva)
Echols Collections: Echols has been concerned at the amount of information lost when book jackets are discarded without any further action. We have taken a number of steps to get around the problem, such as either cutting the jacket and pasting the information into an appropriate place in the book, or copying the information and pasting the copied sections. We are also looking at possibly saving the jackets as a separate collection, or even investigating how we might shelve books with jackets intact. (Greg Green)
Fine Arts Library: - Finished shifting the 1st floor of the FAL after the move of roughly 27K volumes to the Annex. Moved the Zs from the main reading room to the 3rd floor to improve the call number flow. Redistributed another 3K volumes that had been displaced by the removal of shelving to create space for the construction of Career Services (CS). Moved roughly one-half of our flats collection to the Annex to create space on the mezzanine for FAL staff displaced by the move of CS.
- Worked with Margaret Webster, Director of the Knight Visual Resources Facility (KVRF), to facilitate financial arrangement between the College of AAP and CUL to purchase a new digital image database, Scholar’s Resource (SR). CU will purchase this with funds from AAP (70%) and the DRC (30%). This is a rights-cleared dbase that will be stored on a CUL server and delivered via the Luna Insight software. This was a NERL offer; roughly 10 of our NERL associates will take part in this offer. The 60K images are compiled to address the most frequently cited images throughout undergraduate curricula. Arrangements included discussions with the following groups: DRC, DCAPS, Colleges of A&S and AAP, the FAL, and the KVRF. (Martha Walker)
Hotel/Management Library: Hotel has pulled all of their videos together in one location to enable browsing for this format.
Hotel continues to add menu records to its menu database.
Decisions on e-only subscriptions were submitted.
Hotel initiated the Cornell subscription to the CARMA(Center for the Advancement of Research Methods.) This will give registered Cornell users access to CARMA’s video library.
The Library hosted a live CARMA webcast on "Regression Models for Limited Dependent Variables" for faculty and graduate students.
Management added VentureXpert, a venture capital database funded by the Johnson School.
Management added Journal of Trading electronic subscription. (Don Schnedeker)
John Henrik Clarke Africana Library: Received a donation of over 200 titles of Heinemann’s African Writers Series. (Eric Acree)
Music Library: Prof. Marty Hatch has begun donating portions of his collection to the music library, including some 1300 cassettes purchased during trips to Indonesia and Malaysia.
Mark Simon has been spending one afternoon per week in the music library, and has been working on cataloging the Verdi opera scores from the Sidney Cox collection.
We received approval and funding from the DRC for subscriptions to the Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM; cost shared equally between music and fund 519) and Music Online (all of Alexander Street’s online audio databases; full funding from fund 519). (Bonna Boettcher)
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Facilities:
Catherwood Library: The security gate and video camera has been installed in the stairway leading to the third floor of Catherwood. ILR faculty now have their temporary offices on the third floor and opening this stairway provides easier access to this area for students to meet with professors. This arrangement will continue into 2008 or early 2009 until renovation of the faculty wing is completed. (Gordon Law)
Collections, Reference, Instruction, & Outreach (CRIO): The department provided a "parking space," equipped with a computer for unit librarians to use between their Olin meetings. It is located in the reference assistants' area in 106.
Planning for the renovation of Olin 106 suite continues. Kornelia Tancheva and Tony Cosgrave are working with John Hoffman, Phil Koons and the architects to complete the process in 2007.
The Collection Development group of CRIO formerly in Olin 504 relocated to Olin 106F (Kizer Walker, Wanda Wawro, Ada Albright) and Olin B15 (Howard Brentlinger).
The assistive technology workstation was installed in the ETC. Basic staff training was provided by Cyrus Hamilton from the Student Disabilities Services office, who maintains primary responsibility for helping students.
ETC was used for usability studies by the Use and Usability PSEC Committee, co-chaired by Maureen Morris. (Kornelia Tancheva)
Fine Arts Library: - Worked with AAP to create space within the FAL to house AAP’s Career Services Office. Worked with John Hoffmann, Charlie Pomada and Steelcase representative to create two additional staff offices on the mezzanine for FAL staff displaced by the move of CS. CS staff are now occupying space within the FAL. The mezzanine offices for FAL staff are not yet complete.
- Milstein Hall plans were unveiled at a 9/19 event, including a lecture by architect Rem Koolhaas. One of the study models has taken up residence outside MW’s office. MW continues to serve on the building advisory committee, although construction of the library will take place in a subsequent phase of development.
- AAP opened a new facility in NYC, which has had an impact of FAL services (outlined below).
- MW met with two structural engineers to discuss two points of structural concern on the second floor, east wing of Sibley. These cracks will now be monitored. This is particularly important as Milstein Hall is designed to attach and open into the Fine Arts Library at one of these points.
- The screening project was completed. All FAL windows, with the exception of those in the main reading room, are now properly screened. The benefits of these screens were obvious this summer with a complete absence of invasions by wildlife of any sort.
- The FAL was closed two days in July due to a heat advisory by the National Weather service. (Martha Walker)
Hotel/Management Library: Hotel is moving printers and copiers to create more space around the service desks.
The Johnson School replaced 6 chairs in the library’s public area. (Don Schnedeker)
Music Library: Working with Chuck Raniewicz and Prof. Kevin Ernste, we completed the upgrade of the music library computer lab. Kevin is teaching two classes per week in the lab. DLIT staff added 5 new productivity workstations to our public area. (Bonna Boettcher)
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Services
Annex: The Library Annex has not added any new services; we are continuing to maintain the Monday-Friday 24 hour turnaround time for all patron services. (Cammie Hoffmier)
Catherwood Library: The completely redesigned Catherwood Library web site, utilizing Common Spot, was released on Friday, 18 August 06. Mary Newhart, our web and digital projects manager provided the leadership. The core redesign team consisted of Suzanne Cohen, Jim DelRosso, Deb Lamb-Deans, Fran Secord, and Patrizia Sione.
The Seventh Annual Catherwood Cookie day, 20 September 06, was a big success with 140 dozen cookies, 12 cases of juice, and 16 cases of water eagerly consumed by students, staff, and faculty. This event is a way of welcoming students back to campus and usually held several weeks after start of the fall semester when things settle down.
The number of electronic reserve readings, at this point in the semester, has dropped by roughly 50% at Catherwood compared with Fall 2005. (Gordon Law)
Collections, Reference, Instruction, & Outreach (CRIO): The proposal to expand VIVO to the social sciences and eventually the humanities has been funded by the Provost. Deb Schmidle will be the coordinator for the social sciences portal.
Under Virginia Cole’s guidance, the Digital Reference Services Committee has received initial training and is planning a pilot project to test the viability of engaging in an academic library cooperative for chat reference. The goal is to expand basic online information services to 24/7.
Tony Cosgrave and Nancy Skipper participated in the CUL/CIT BlackBoard integration project, the first phase of which was completed in September. Persistent links to the Library Gateway and to the AskALibrarian link are now an integral feature of BlackBoard sites. RefWorks is also available in the tools menu. In addition, Tony partnered with CIT in providing instruction for faculty in developing their BlackBoard sites and including links to library resources.
Reference desk staffing is undergoing a review process. We covered Uris Library evenings, 7-10 pm, with students, instead of reference assistants for the first six weeks of the semester. The reference assistants provided coverage in Olin on Monday and Tuesday evenings, thereby reducing the number of evenings covered by librarians who need to be available during the day to teach classes and participate on projects.
Michael Engle compiled the 2005-6 NetTracker statistics on the department online tools. In a year, there were 2,186,332 total hits on pages with individual hits of 100+. The combined components of the online research tutorial Michael developed received over one million hits.
Although we will continue to provide service to alums via reference e-mail, the Alumni & Friends access question manager database is in the process of being phased out.
Virginia Cole and Tony Cosgrave coordinated the reception for new graduate students and faculty and a re-named Library E-Services Fair for new students.
As part of our efforts towards assessment, we have created a web-based instruction evaluation form to evaluate the content we provide in our instruction sessions.
In order to further the department's outreach goals, Clay Chiment, a reference assistant, is presenting a session on library services and resources at Risley hall as part of their regular training series.
Tony Cosgrave has successfully negotiated with CIT the loan of a clicker unit to use in the instruction sessions at Uris and Olin as part of our movement towards more interactive library instruction.
We have begun a discussion of the feasibility of blogs for reference. (Kornelia Tancheva)
Echols Collections: Echols is reviewing several services, including our new books display shelves in the Asia Reading Room and our microfilm copying policies for patrons and other libraries. New books have been problematic because the temporary location is not noted on the catalog record. We have questioned the value of the service in relation to the time it eats up but found that patrons do seem to enjoy it. We have also been clarifying our policy of when we will copy microfilm to ensure that we do not infringe on copyright. (Greg Green)
Fine Arts Library: - MW worked with Jesse Koennecke, Carmen Blankinship, and Julie Copenhagen to organize book and document delivery services to the students and faculty based at the NYC facility. MW created a visual guide to requesting items for these patrons; as well, investigated library services by peer institutions in the NYC area.
- The FAL staff spent a good deal of time working with faculty and TAs on the new reserve procedures. As expected, the new procedures were unwelcome by some faculty members. Other faculty members, however, accepted the new procedures and a few even applauded the changes. The staff did, however, witness approximately six “faculty meltdowns” at the front desk regarding the changes. All incidents were followed up on by MW with the faculty member or the department chair, to the staff and faculty members’ satisfaction. Several faculty/library relationships that were temporarily threatened have returned to a state of mutual regard and cordiality.
- Much of September was spent filling reserve requests, hiring and training new students, welcoming and orienting students and faculty, and making new acquaintances and working procedures with our AAP CS neighbors. (Martha Walker)
Hotel/Management Library: Library instruction programs at Management & Hotel are in full swing including a class taught in both Management & Hotel by Angela Horne and Mihoko Hosoi respectively.
Management hosted a couple of presentations by representatives from Capital IQ, a financial information service. (Don Schnedeker)
IRIS Account and Administrative Support: Our group has been working with Library Accounting Office on 2 important matters. One is to review security access to PSA’s accounts and make changes to reflect the organizational change. Library Accounting will complete the changes in the system shortly. The other is to review last FY’s account status in the general purpose accounts. All balances, positive or negative, will be rolled over to this fiscal year and will be reflected in the unit’s statement of Sept. Several units should expect to see a large negative balance.
Our group revised the GOE expenses report (a.k.a. 4705 report) to assist better budget decisions in the PSA units. We are in the process of seeking feedback from unit heads on the usefulness of the report. (Mary Arsenault)
John Henrik Clarke Africana Library: Added Saturday hours for fall and spring semesters. Africana Library will be open on Saturdays, 1pm-5pm. (Eric Acree)
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Staff
Annex: New staff members, Michael Strange and Brian Krawczyk, on a term appointments for the Annex move project.
While not members of the Annex staff, the Annex does enjoy the presence of staff from other units working on projects related to material housed at the Annex, i.e. LTS staff working on Harris and Gift material. (Cammie Hoffmier)
Catherwood Library: Suzanne Cohen will be moving into the collection development position created by Deb Schmidle’s departure. We are currently searching for a Coordinator of Reference, Instruction, and Outreach Services and that position has been posted at www.ohr.cornell.edu/jobs/. The posting number is 06013. The search committee consists of Stuart Basefsky, Professor Michael Gold, Mihoko Hosoi, Deb Lamb-Deans, chair, Jim Morris-Knower, and Patrizia Sione. Suzanne will continue to cover her current assignment until we hire a new coordinator. (Gordon Law)
Collections, Reference, Instruction, & Outreach (CRIO):
Staff Comings, Goings, Changes in Appointments:
Kornelia Tancheva began her new position as the Director of the Department of Collections, Reference, Instruction & Outreach on July 1st.
Ida Martinez, Outreach Coordinator in CRIO, left in July to move to Atlanta, Georgia.
A CUL position for an outreach/usability librarian has been posted. Deadline for applications is Oct. 31st.
Deb Schmidle joined CRIO on September 1st as the new Social Sciences Coordinator.
Rachel Inbar joined the department as a new reference assistant, temporarily filling in for Gaby Castro Gessner who is on leave through next spring to finish her PhD.
Sarah How's hours were increased from 30 to 35 to enable her to take on government selection.
Lynn Thitchener took over responsibility for managing our student information assistants during Gaby Castro Gessner’s leave.
Randi Kepecs received a temporary 10 hour per week assignment to assist the WebFeat implementation team.
Staff Involvement in Major Committees, Working Groups, Projects, Teams that Have Implemented Their Charges In Full or in Part :
Fred Muratori is the new head of the Humanities Selector Team and member of CDExec.
Deb Schmidle is the new head of the Social Sciences Selector Team and member of CDExec.
Deb is also part of the Large-Scale Digitization group which is close to signing a contract.
Maureen Morris and Kizer Walker are on the WebFeat implementation team, which launched the first phase of an enhanced Find Articles.
Maureen Morris is also on the Find Databases group, which successfully launched the new ERM version of Find Databases.
Kizer Walker, Virginia Cole, Ida Martinez, Lance Heidig, and Lynn Thitchener participated in the Reference & Outreach group charged with reviewing the databases included in FD. They submitted a report, which is currently being reviewed by PSEC.
Lynn Thitchener transitioned the Department's Information Index to the Confluence software, which allows for dynamic and distributed maintenance and update.
Tony Cosgrave and Nancy Skipper participated in the CUL/CIT BlackBoard integration project (see above under Services).
Lance Heidig was heavily involved in the New Student Reading Project. He provided content for the Project web site, maintained a blog about The Great Gatsby, gave a talk to Alumni about the Cornell connections to Fitzgerald, co-curated a Gatsby-related display in RMC, and led a small-group discussion session.
Tony Cosgrave also led a discussion group.
Lance Heidig coordinated the Library's Book Collection Contest. Two of the three Cornell prizewinners won 1st and 3rd prizes in the new national Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship. The Library will receive awards in the amounts of $1,000 and $250 in recognition of our students' accomplishments.
Kizer Walker is involved in two CU Press/CUL publishing initiatives with the German Studies and Classics Departments.
Kornelia Tancheva, Tony Cosgrave and Kizer Walker are involved in the Information Fluency priority team's work. The team is bringing Elizabeth Dupuis and Pat Maughan, Project Director and Project Manager of the Mellon-funded Faculty/Library Undergraduate Research Institute at Berkeley for a visit to Cornell on Oct. 4-6th
Various Professional Development Activities
Fred Muratori's poem The Meaning Box was included as the first entry in “Like a Fragile Index of the World: Poems for David Skorton,” a volume created in honor of the inauguration of Cornell’s new president, David Skorton.
Tony Cosgrave's proposal for a panel "Fostering and Measuring Collaborative Computing and Learning in the Cornell Library Collaborative Learning Computer Laboratory (CL3)," was accepted for the ACRL 13th National Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kornelia Tancheva's proposal for a contributed paper "Social Navigation and Recommender Systems" was also accepted for the ACRL conference.
Kizer Walker is part of the CUL team selected to participate in the ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication, which will take place at Duke University in December.
Fred Muratori and Kornelia Tancheva participated in the selection of materials on drama and theatre to be included in the Resources for College Libraries revised edition, the web version of which was just available at http://www.rclinfo.net/default.asp.
Kornelia also served as the drama and theatre subject editor. (Kornelia Tancheva)
Echols Collections: No changes yet. Echols will soon hire an administrative assistant to fill the position vacated by Katie Williams. (Greg Green)
Fine Arts Library: - Worked with Margaret Webster, director of the KVRF, to advertise and hire for a new, 20 hr./wk., term appt.: digital image instruction assistant. Karen Brummund began in this new position in mid-September. She will spend roughly a third of her time at the KVRF, a third at the FAL, and a third in faculty offices, teaching both the faculty and TAs how to use our various digital image resources and image presentation tools.
- MW was invited to work with Margaret Webster as she hired a new Visual Resources Curator, who will begin work on a full time basis at the KVRF on October 2nd. Greta Bahnemann has an M.A. in Early American Culture from the Winterthur Program. Her MLIS is from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the U of British Columbia; and, she was awarded the 2006 Gordon New Memorial Prize, which recognizes outstanding accomplishment and leadership potential within the field of academic librarianship. (Martha Walker)
Hotel/Management Library: Thad Dickinson resigned in August for a new opportunity in Atlanta, GA.
Staci Rogers was hired as Assistant Librarian at Hotel.
Barbara Bartholomew and Karen Bobbett are participating in ‘Crucial Conversations.’
Hotel is interviewing for a Circulation Supervisor.
Angela Horne traveled to Istanbul in September as a required field trip for her Boardroom EMBA program. While in Istanbul, her team worked with a local Turkish company on a feasibility study for a new business venture.
Angela was also selected as Chair of SLA's Student and Academic Affairs Advisory Council. This international appointment lasts for two years. (Don Schnedeker)
IRIS Account and Administrative Support: The latest round of reorganization has brought about significant changes for the IRIS Administrative Support Staff. Rachel has relocated to 201 Olin and is now reporting to Michele Eastman. She is now full-time and splits her time supporting 201 and PSA equally.
The relocation of Mary and Tiffany to room 215 does not change their primary responsibilities: Tiffany continues to provide administrative support, travel/expense reimbursement vouchers, project support, as well as assist with various accounting summaries, reports and distributions.
Mary will continue as financial coordinator assisting Xin with various special projects, creating reports, liaison with accounting, human resources, Office of Sponsored Programs and provide training and financial assistance to Public Services and Assessment directors and unit heads. (Mary Arsenault)
Music Library: Technical services integration went into effect in early July. Jim Alberts spends one afternoon per week in LTS, while Mark Simon spends one afternoon per week in music. (Bonna Boettcher)
Olin/Kroch/Uris Access Services: Jairo Van Lunteren (primarily Olin) and Shayla Harrington (primarily Uris) were hired as late night staff members who work from 10:30pm to 2:30 am.
Diana Goodrich was promoted to late night supervisor working 10:30pm-2:30am primarily at Olin Library. (Carmen Blankinship/Bethany Silfer)
Preservation and Collection Maintenance: An assistant book conservator, Sophia Kramer, started working in the department on September 7. Her primary responsibility is the conservation of the Native American Collection. (Michele Brown)
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Other
Annex: Interesting statistic: scanning for local document delivery and interlibrary loan has increased 33 percent during the first quarter of this fiscal year in comparison to the same quarter in 05/06 and 45 percent in comparison to the same quarter in 04/05. (Cammie Hoffmier)
Catherwood Library: Stuart Basefsky authored the lead article in September’s Information Outlook published by Special Libraries Association. Full citation is: Basefsky, Stuart. “Mis-Information at the Heart of the University: Why Administrators Should Take Libraries More Seriously,” Information Outlook, 10 (August 2006), 15-19. The article is available from ProQuest at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1124817471&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=
8424&RQT=309&VName=PQD&cfc=1
Due to budgetary shortfalls, the school eliminated 16 positions within the ILR Extension Division state-wide this fall. The Division had been restructured over the course of the last year in order to realign user and market needs with services provided and strengths of the school. Revenue from last year’s savings were not sufficient to address an anticipated deficit this coming year. Catherwood serves the information needs of the ILR Extension Division and we continue to assess the implications of restructuring and layoffs in the context of services provided. (Gordon Law)
Collections, Reference, Instruction, & Outreach (CRIO): The Reference Statistics Reporting System, spearheaded by Gaby Castro Gessner in conjunction with CS101 students, is up and running well. Print data collection forms are no longer being used.
Numerous one-on-one training and orientation sessions were provided for new staff. Nine group in-house staff training sessions were provided, including “guest” presentations from CISER staff. (Kornelia Tancheva)
Hotel/Management Library: Don Schnedeker is meeting with new faculty in Hotel and Johnson Schools.
Don is participating on the Hotel School’s Web Renovation Project committee.
Angela Horne and Doris Smith staff a library booth at EPE's Entrepreneurship Expo (Sep 26th) and fielded questions from more than 60 CU faculty, staff, and students. (Don Schnedeker)
John Henrik Clarke Africana Library: Africana Library held the first of three brown bag lunches on Tuesday, September 12, 2006. Mary Ochs (Mann Library) talked about the TEEAL, AGORA and HINARI Programs. (Eric Acree)
Preservation and Collection Maintenance: Conducted system wide disaster training.
Began 2006-07 Conservation Training program sponsored by SCRLC and WNYRLC. Approaching the milestone of the transfer of ½ million volumes to the Annex. (Barbara Berger Eden)
