WeTALC meeting

April 3, 2004

Jackson State Community College

Minutes of the Board

President Steve Rogers called the meeting to order after a continental breakfast provided by our hosts at Jackson State. Those present included Hope Shull, Steve Baker, Scott Cohen, Lan Wang, Darlene Brooks, Robert Lhota, Priscilla Stephenson, Margaret Cardwell, Harold Kelly, Sylverna Ford, Pam Dennis, and Kathy Breeden who was visiting from Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN.

The minutes of the previous meeting were approved.

Old Business: A discussion of SACS new standards and accreditation process included information about quality enhancement plans, institutional effectiveness, and measurable outcomes.

New Business:

Hope Shull has graciously agreed to serve as President for the coming year. Margaret Cardwell will continue as secretary.

There was a lively discussion regarding annual reviews and faculty status. Some members are not required to do evaluations at all. It was agreed that evaluations are important, especially if they are done in an atmosphere that is developmental as opposed to punitive. The evaluation process allows for a neutral ground in addressing problems. Evaluations also record employee successes that we tend to overlook during the course of a year. Faculty status is held by most librarians in the group.

Harold Kelly passed out an article from Reference & User Services Quarterly discussing the impact of computer assisted instruction and bibliographic instruction.

Scott Cohen provided a schedule of meeting sites beginning with October 1993 projected to spring, 2011. The fall 2004 meeting will be hosted by the University of Tennessee in Memphis. A meeting of the reference group is scheduled for this summer at LeMoyne-Owen College.

Priscilla Stephenson distributed flyers on the TENN-SHARE workshops for the summer of 2004. She noted that there are many offerings available in West Tennessee.

The meeting was adjourned.

Spring Program

Darlene Brooks, accompanied by several of her colleagues from Rhodes College, presented a very informative program on the construction of their new library set to open in the fall of 2005. The slide presentation showcased the building progress and the overcrowding in their current space. The new library building will house the library and its staff as well as the Vice President for Information Services and the Information Technology department. Darlene gave an excellent overview of the process involved in team building for the two departments so that they will be able to work as a more cohesive group. She also noted that the library has been moved from the administration of the Academic Vice President to the Division of Information Services. The Rhodes staff believes that this reorganization has been very beneficial to the library in that they truly have an advocate in their new VP.

Lunch and conversation followed the presentation. The directors reported to the group on what is happening at each of their institutions. Those reports are attached.

Christian Brother University Report

Spring 2004

This has been a busy winter for CBU as we continue to be short staffed. Jane Fleet was seriously injured in an automobile accident at the end of Oct. She was in a rehabilitation facility through Jan. and decided in early Feb. that she could not return to work and therefore has retired. Laura Simpson left us in mid- November. Her replacement, Elizabeth Jackson, started in January. Elizabeth is supervising ILL and has assumed the bulk of the cataloging duties, learning as she goes. She is a recent graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. We have interviewed several candidates to fill our vacant position.

Bridgette Decent and Margaret Cardwell attended the Orientation training at the end of February for our migration to Endeavor. We had hoped to be able to work on catalog clean up this winter. Unfortunately we have not had enough time to attack that project as each staff member assumed some part of acquisitions and cataloging responsibilities. Bridgette Decent and Margaret Cardwell are recipients of an institutional travel grant to attend the Endeavor Users’ Group meeting in April.

Our first WebCT initiative for library instruction was very successful. More than 200 students took the tutorial at the request of their instructors. Often the tutorial was a prerequisite for an instruction class delivered by Benjamin Head. Once we have completed migration and have a new staff person we hope to add additional modules to the tutorial in the fall. Bridgette Decent and Laura Simpson presented a program on this WebCT effort at TLA in March.

Lambuth University, WeTALC - April 3, 2004

The library at Lambuth University has been active in visibility outreach this semester, sponsoring faculty development sessions, giving flu shots, holding workshops, sponsoring book reviews, and buying equipment. The result was the receipt of over $12,000 in gifts from local donors, use by off-campus researchers, and the receipt of Jewish memorabilia and a major music collection.

Faculty development sessions were held on using EBSCO databases, making the most of the online public access catalog, using Nicenet (online supplemental course development), and detecting plagiarism. Faculty were particularly interested in the latter two and appreciative of having crash courses in areas that they saw directly beneficial to their work. Because of the new visibility of the library, offices throughout the campus began using the library and including it in tours. The campus nurse even called to see if she could give flu shots in the library, since it is a highly frequented place by the students. Additionally, the Financial Aid Office began a Saturday children’s reading program this week and worked with the library staff to advertise, promote, and present this new program. The Jewish exhibit mentioned last meeting was so popular that it was held over for an additional two weeks. The materials are now housed in the library in the Lambuth-B’Nai Israel Center for Jewish Studies and have frequent visitors. The most recent exhibit (March 12-24) was "The Rescue of the Jews from Annihilation," sponsored by the Project Judaica Foundation concerning the rescue of Jewish by the Danish people in October 1943. A grant was received from the Hohenberg Charitable Foundation in the amount of $5000 to add a computer and more research materials. An additional $7000 was given by Fred Wells and Proctor and Gamble for general library materials. The Library Committee, made up of faculty from all disciplines, sponsored two book reviews, one given by our Academic Dean, Susan Kupisch, and one by religion professor Gene Davenport who also signed his recently published books.

Some improvements include cataloging the music scores (approximately 1000 with added Tables of Contents), adding an online interlibrary loan form to the library webpage, and adding a collection feature in the library’s newsletter each month to highlight various areas of the collection. Through the support of the School of Business, we have added a laptop computer, projector, and projection screen to the Media Center, all of which stay checked out most of the time by faculty and administration. We also added a digital camera and DVD/VHS combo system to the Center for use by faculty. All library faculty and staff continue to attend workshops to improve their skills in their fields. Particularly, Susan is continuing her master’s work at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville through remote access, Sammy completed an online course through the University of Maryland College of Information Studies in virtual reference, Mitzi attended and took an online course in cataloging, Jackie attended archival sessions, and Rex attended local workshops. Pam is co-authoring a pictorial history of Lambuth University to be published in the fall by Arcadia Publishing Company. Sammy, Susan, and Pam attended the TLA annual meeting and gained even more helpful knowledge for maintaining the library. At the meeting, Pam served on a panel with librarians from The University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Sevier County Public Library System, Hardin Valley Elementary School, and Memphis Shelby County Public Library and Information Center on creating and distributing library newsletters. SOLINET also brought two cataloging courses to Lambuth including "The Successful Searcher in OCLC Connexion Client" and "Copy Cataloging with OCLC Connexion Client." Participants included librarians from UT-Martin, Christian Brothers, Rhodes, Union, and Lambuth, under the instruction of Marlee Dorn.

A large amount of time has been spent this semester conducting an electronic inventory. After completing a complete shelf-read of the library, each staff member and a few students are scanning the barcodes on each book with a PDA and downloading that information in Voyager with the aid of software developed by Paul Asay of Indiana State University. Because of the number of books that are missing, the library was given a $10,000 grant through the university’s Technology Committee to purchase a 3M security system for the Fall semester. Book stripping will begin immediately.

Special interest has been paid to the library by graduate students this semester. Joshua Williams, graduate assistant at the Louisiana Tech University Archives, spent his spring break reading microfilmed copies of the Nashville Christian Advocate (a Methodist publication) to complete his master’s dissertation on slavery and the church. Jeremy Tubbs, doctoral student at The University of Memphis, will be writing his dissertation on the Maccafferi collection now housed at Lambuth. The collection of sheet music and books includes transcriptions for guitar of masterworks, some of which are signed by major performers including Andrés Segovia. He was famous for his work with Selmer guitars and for the creation of French-American Reed Manufacturing Company which still operates in Jackson and supplies reeds worldwide.

Dr. Pam Dennis, Director

The library conducted a focus group session with 9 students answering questions about the library. The Director of Public Relations was the moderator.

A lot of good suggestions came from the focus group, including the request for group study rooms.

Debbie Blankenship and Joyce Johnston attended two cataloging workshops held at the University of Memphis. (Introduction to Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification workshop) They felt the workshops, developed by the MARC of Quality, were very beneficial.

Mary Ellen Pozzebon and Joyce Johnston developed an online Information Literacy Tutorial that serves as an introduction to library research. More than 500 students completed the tutorial and a corresponding exercise.

Mary Ellen Pozzebon took a web-based seminar on "Assessment of Learning Outcomes" offered through the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Joyce Johnston developed an extensive introduction to the Turabian citation format for a distance education class.

Gloria Hester is working on a Student Worker Training manual. Gloria has been busy on several important committees, including the Curriculum Committee and she is a member of the Faculty council.

The JSCC Library has begun a Professional Reading Area. Books dealing with teaching, students, the learning college concept, etc. have been placed in a special area and designated as the Professional Reading Area.

Jill Daniel has developed several displays, including one for National Women's History Month. She had a display on motion pictures that was coordinated with our first ever film course here at JSCC. Jill is working on the update for the West Tennessee List of Periodicals.

Linda Hale is back with us after her open heart surgery. She has made a full recovery.

Barbara Casey will present a workshop for Tennshare in August on book repair.

The next Reference meeting will be at the Lemoyne-Owen College Library in Memphis in the summer.

The next WETALC meeting will be in Memphis at the UT Center for Health Sciences Library.

The summer of 2003 saw many changes in the library. The staff was busy physically moving materials and books all summer. The Audio Visual section of the library was moved into newly renovated space in the adjacent Draughon building. Everything was completed by the time the fall semester began. In addition to the audio visual resources the new annex has three group study rooms, a snack area and a large library instruction room.

Long range plans continued in preparation of building a new library. Several meetings were held with the architectural firm of Earl Swensson Associates and the President’s Council. A fund raising campaign for the new library is in the planning stages. The location was chosen and preliminary drawings were submitted to present to the FHU Board of Trustees and potential donors.

The fall was spent getting staff and users used to the newly separated library departments and the new shelving ranges. Night time supervisors in the AV Annex began work on our cataloging and conversion of cassette tapes. The material on the tapes will then be shifted to a CD format that is both more stable and more accessible to our users.

Several new databases were purchased. Newsbank and four collections of JSTOR were begun in the fall semester. All JSTOR holdings were added to our online catalog.

Library instruction increased in popularity, and many subject specific sessions were taught. In the spring, Wade and Hope began one on one sessions with faculty. These sessions were visits with each faculty member in his or her office going over all the new library resources and library resources in general that relate to the faculty member’s subject area. These sessions were an overwhelming success and many suggestions were made to enhance the library’s usefulness.

The annual library survey was composed and overseen by John Wilson. The survey was given to a sampling of undergraduates, graduates and faculty during the spring semester.

The staff took part in many professional meetings. These included; CULS (College & University Library Section) of TLA, Tenn-Share Annual Meeting, WeTALC Fall and Spring meetings, WeTALC’s Reference Section meetings, TLA Annual Meeting, the meeting of the Endeavor user’s group EndUser, and the annual meeting of the CCL (Christian College Librarians). John Wilson and Hope Shull made a presentation at the EndUser meeting in Chicago. Teresa Hanger and Wade Osburn had articles published. Sherry Jennette, Wade Osburn, Teresa Hanger and Shirley Eaton turned in indexing for RSI. Wade also planned and executed a chapel program that spotlighted our library during American Library Week. Shirley Eaton took the oversight of our many in-house displays for the year. These are listed in the issues of the Lionet Gazette, which Wade continued to publish. All issues are available on the library’s web site.

John Wilson continued to work on the library web site and redesigned the electronic resources pages to make them more functional for users.

Changing the classification system from Dewey to LC has been a long range goal for the library. In the fall the decision was made to begin the conversion. As of November all new materials are being cataloged using LC call numbers. A proposal was made to Sam Jones to fund this project using the MARCIVE Company. This company will take our catalog database and switch the Dewey numbers to the LC numbers and print out all the new call number labels in LC, but in Dewey order. This will enable us to efficiently re-label the books and then to begin the labor intensive process of reshelving in the new system. This project will fill the upcoming summer.

Several gift collections were received. Retiring professor Gerald Fulkerson and the estate of Joseph Cox donated books.

A Friends of the Library proposal was submitted to the Vice-President for University Advancement. This group will be integrated into the upcoming fund raising campaign for the new library.

The newly created full-time position of Audio Visual cataloging assistant was filled by Angie Burns. The part-time evening positions in the new AV Annex were filled by three individuals in the fall and two in the spring.

In response to student requests, the Paul Meek Library staff subscribed to Encyclopedia Britannica Online. This important new resource features a collection of authoritative reference articles which can be either searched or browsed according to the requirements of the user.  In addition to Britannica's most current article database, there are hundreds of additional articles not found in the printed version of Britannica.  The subscription also includes the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition), the Britannica Book of the Year and numerous links to other important websites selected by Britannica's editors.

Head Reference Librarian John Bell recommended that the library subscribe to a valuable new resource entitled Westlaw Campus, a law database geared specifically for ease of use by students. This important resource incorporates the data from Supreme Court Reporter, South West Reporter and several other sets, as well as 660 law and law-related journals which can be searched full text. Westlaw Campus not only pays for itself, but will actually the library money which can be spent on other resources.

Despite the work of Systems Librarian Jim Nance and his technical assistant to create a program which would automate browser reconfiguration for purposes of authentication,

problems with students failing to read instructions prompted the library faculty to vote to adopt EZ Proxy as our off-campus student verification method. After polling other WeTALC and UT System libraries, it was determined that EZ Proxy was not only being used by a number of those institutions, but was also determined to be effective and reliable.

The Paul Meek Library Media Services Department and the Office of Information Technology Services (Computer Center) worked together to offer students a new Multimedia Workstation computer. This new computer, located in the Media Services Department on the first floor of the Paul Meek Library, is a brand new, full-featured, state-of-the-art computer featuring both hardware and software which will allow students to create many different types of multimedia, including DVD’s of student projects and creative portfolios.

At the request of the faculty in the Chemistry Department, Library Director Steve Rogers, Acquisitions Librarian Linda Butler and Periodicals Librarian Pat Greer worked during the Fall Semester to convert the library's holdings of American Chemical Society journals from print to electronic format. Systems Librarian Jim Nance added the ACS database and archival links to the library catalog just prior to the site being connected at the beginning of the spring semester. The library staff has already received many good reports from the Chemistry faculty concerning the usefulness of this new database.

The library recently announced that we have received a major new endowment for books in American literature from Dr. Anne Meek Kraine, daughter of Dr. Paul Meek, for whom our library is named. The books purchased through the endowment will memorialize Anne’s mother, Mrs. Martha C. Meek.

The library recently expanded its collection of SOLINET electronic books by 7,800 titles at a cost of only $1 per FTE student. This addition gives us a total of almost 22,000 electronic books accessible through the library catalog.

The library was able to cobble together enough funds this year to purchase four free standing stack ranges for the second floor circulating collection. After the stacks have been installed, the library staff will coordinate a major book shift this summer.

In anticipation of the summer shifting project, the library’s internal weeding committee has withdrawn over 600 volumes this year.

The University Museum, located in the Special Collections Department of the library,

offered a diverse number of new exhibits during the fall and Spring Semesters, including photographic displays of Vietnam and Sri Lanka, in addition to an exhibit of folk music instruments from the Appalachian region and an overview of the history of comic books.

The Cataloging Department as completed the conversion of their workflow to the OCLC Connexion module and to Innovative’s new Millennium cataloging system.

The library has upgraded virtually most of its service desk and staff computers over the past two years in order to better handle the recent conversion to the Millennium III system. The move to Millennium was funded by the Campus Technology Fee, with the costs pro-rated over a three year period.

The library’s "Robodemo" tutorials have been upgraded to reflect our recent conversion to the EBSCO’s databases Academic Search Premiere and Business Source Premiere.

JANUARY 08, 2004 Rhodes went Live with SIRSI. We decided to pay for a "Go Live Trainer" to be on-site, and we are very glad that we did. As soon as SIRSI released our server to us, we were hacked twice, and the hacker changed all the passwords.

It was very comforting to have the trainer there to hold our hand.

The Circulation module and Serials module are excellent. We had some reservations about bringing SIRSI up in the middle of a school year, but our workstudy students who are in Circulation have had no problems in adapting to the software. Faculty, staff, and other students love the new interface, and the amount of data that SIRSI has to offer. They particular enjoy the "My Account" feature that allows patrons to renew books online, see the fines or fees they may have, and to place holds online. The Cataloging module really needs to have catalogers work very closely with the software developers.

All 4 floors of the library are now in, and the slate for the roof, and the stone for the outside of the building is starting to go into place. The Library staff has taken two tours of the building wearing their hard hats and locating the approximate vicinity of their offices. Doug Walker and Stacy Pennington, two of our IT colleagues, took the webcam slides and developed it into a time-lapse movie.

Members of the Library Staff and IT staff are on a committee that deals with the new furniture that will be in the new Library. This committee has been very active in either visiting companies that sell office furniture or having companies come to campus to show their designs. Because this will be a very large furniture order, the order must be placed by the end of this summer at the latest in order for it to be ready by next summer.

The Catalogers decided in January 2004 to make the change from OCLC Passport to Connexion. The new browser based site has been much easier to use and navigate.

Beginning March 23 and ending on April 3, 2004—the Library asked all of the Rhodes Community to help plan for the future of the Paul Barret Jr. Library. The Library felt that it is important that we understand our users’ perceptions and expectations so that we can provide the services they need. By responding to the survey, users will provide essential information for us to use in planning for the future. The survey is part of a North American effort led by the Association of Research Libraries to measure library service quality and identify best practices. As of April 3^rd over 150 persons had responded.