WeTALC meeting – March 29, 2003, held at the University of Memphis

Minutes of the Board

President Pam Dennis called the meeting to order after a continental breakfast provided by our hosts from the University of Memphis. Those present include Hope Shull, Tom Mendina, Annelle Huggins, Billie Jo Harris, Steve Rogers, Scott Cohen, Annette Hunt, Steve Baker, Lan Wang, Darlene Brooks, Priscilla Stephenson, Margaret Cardwell. Minutes were approved.

Old business discussed:

• Steve Rogers said ETSU has used the newly revised SACS criteria for libraries. Information is available through their web page. SACS used ETSU as a special test site for putting all the documents related to their reaccreditation online via the web. Anyone can go to their institutional effectiveness webpage and see them. The suggestion is that the report for SACS should speak to student related issues. Univ. of Memphis is scheduled for SACS visit in the spring of 2005.

• Scott Cohen says that he will continue to host the WeTALC website as long as he is able. Steve Rogers volunteered that Jim Nance would take it on if Jackson State should decide that they can no longer host the site.
• The print serials list was briefly discussed and tabled.
• Scott Cohen would like to see groups of paraprofessionals be able to meet in a manner similar to the reference group. Time and travel dollar constraints on those paraprofessionals makes their getting together more difficult.
• TLA meets in April in Chattanooga. Annelle Huggins spoke briefly about the meeting.
• Pam Dennis has written to our legislators concerning the LSTA.
• A brief discussion about the Patriot Act followed Annelle’s remarks regarding TLA.
• The reworked constitution and by-laws was discussed. Steve Rogers moved and Annette Hunt seconded its approval. The vote was unanimous in favor of the new document.

New business:

Annelle Huggins discussed the steps needed to become an affiliate member of TLA. Hope thought that when she was president those steps had been taken. It was determined that the TLA board had perhaps not ever acted on the request. A new request would be submitted and probably acted on at the Spring TLA meeting.

Steve Rogers volunteered to house the WeTALC archives at the University of Tennessee at Martin. A discussion of where the various documents relating to the organization might be ensued. Hopefully they can be collected and sent to Martin.

Officers for the coming year were elected:

Chairperson: Steve Rogers

Vice chair: Darlene Brooks

Secretary/treasurer: Margaret Cardwell

At large positions: Scott Cohen, Annette Hunt

The meeting was adjourned. Tom Mendina introduced the program for the morning. The University of Memphis was the recent recipient of a grant from ALA, NSF, and National Video Resources. The grant supplied the films and supports the discussion groups for the Research Revolution series. We saw the beautiful film Natural Connections.

WeTALC meeting – March 29, 2003 – Lambuth University

The library at Lambuth University has added a new staff member since our last meeting. Lyda Kowalski retired from Government Documents after nine years of service. Kenneth Deaton joined us in February, working in Government Documents as well as assisting at Reference and in reorganizing the archives.

We are still having active participation by our faculty in taking advantage of bibliographic instruction for the students. Sammy Chapman has given 29 sessions in the last six months, reaching over 350 students.

We have completed the recon cataloging project; so all books in our library are now searchable through our online catalog. We are in the process of updating the look of the OPAC for better convenience of our students.

The Library Committee has actively sponsored several events this semester. We had a book signing by three local authors, all of whom were affiliated with Lambuth. Next month, one of our history professors will present a book review in the library that will be open to the public. The Kappa Sigma fraternity has been doing their community service in the library, offering a children’s reading program on Saturdays.

Our new Lambuth-B’Nai Israel Center for Jewish Studies will open on April 15. The public is invited to a service at the local synagogue. The first major exhibit is slated to open in the fall on the history of the Jewish community in Jackson.

Several support staff members participated in staff development activities. There was a TLA workshop dealing with problem behaviors in the library, basics of library cataloging and stress management) In addition, support staff attended a "Soaring To Excellence"

teleconference on library support staff issues.

The JSCC Library support staff wishes to move certification of library support staff in Tennessee and are supportive of a paraprofessional roundtable of TLA discussing this.

Joyce Johnston, Catalog/ Reference Librarian, created a bibliography dealing with the learner-centered organization. The college has as a goal to become learner-centered and the bibliography spotlighted key resources in the library and available electronically. The library purchased many sources from the bibliography.

Mary Ellen Pozzebon, our new Reference and Instruction Librarian, has created an electronic calendar which is shared by all employees. It lists library instruction sessions, workshops, staff days off, etc.

The library has gotten back the student questionnaires which are given out each Spring. All Tuesday-Thursday classes at 9:35 and all Tuesday night classes received the questionnaires this year.

The JSCC Library is preparing for a SACS visit in 2005. Everyone has attended workshops which have discussed the Institutional Effectiveness procedures. The Library is creating physical folders with survey results, other measurements, meetings discussing effective actions, goals, etc.

The library cut 26% of its operating budget for next year. Hardest hit was the book budget with close to 40% cuts.

We have had a busy spring. Some of our activities have included, teaching library instruction, teaching a faculty in-service session, giving our annual library user survey, hosting a student worker dinner, and changing our web site to try and make it more user friendly. We also purchased a HP digital sender which sends materials from an email address to an email address. This has many uses in the library; among them has been the ability to put some reserve items into our catalog for students to access via the Internet using our online catalog.

As a result of our recent SACs visit we have two areas that will change this summer. We are adding space to our library by moving our audiovisual section to a nearby building. We also will be adding an Audiovisual Cataloging Assistant as a paraprofessional. We are not excited about dividing our collections up but we are excited about having a new person to help with our audiovisual materials. One of our upcoming projects will be to convert hundreds of cassettes containing sermons to more stable formats like CDs.

If moving an entire section of our library to a nearby building and then adding shelving and reshifting our remaining collection isn’t enough, we also plan to do an inventory of our collection. This will be the first time in over 15 years. Scary! Our audiovisual section has been the only area where we inventoried each year.

We want to purchase a one gate security system so if anyone knows of someone having a used one, please let us know because we would be interested.

We have also started long range planning to either renovate or enlarge our present building or to build a new library. We plan to hire a consultant to help us use our space efficiently. We in the library are hoping and lobbying for a new library facility and are making projections for that in the next 5 to 6 years.

Christian Brother University Report

Our migration to a web catalog has been put off because of budget constraints. Our enrollment is not as anticipated. We will begin authority control work in any case.

Our NetLibrary records were loaded to our catalog. As others have experienced, the use of this resource has increased.

We opened a small coffee station for all in the basement of the library in Feb. Faculty and staff say that this is a nice amenity but at this point it is not very well used. We are only equipped to offer regular coffee.

We have an open house planned for National Library Week. We’ll have coffee, cookies and poetry readings to celebrate poetry month.

One of the English faculty has assigned her students a research paper in which part of the process is to talk with a librarian who signs off on the student’s research. Both the students and the librarians find this an intense but very productive way of doing instruction.

1). The Burrow Library is happy to report that as of March 20, the decision was made to migrate from the DRA system to the SIRSI system. It has been determined that the SIRSI system will be in place by the opening of school this Fall semester-2003.

Because of the migration to SIRSI--Bill Short – Public Services Coordinator and Rachel Feinman – Cataloger & Collection Development Librarian are in the process of meeting with select departments in a weeding process. An Inventory project is being planned for the month of May to clean up the database.

A webcam has been mounted that will give a live digital view of the new library building progress. A link from the Rhodes College homepage will be available soon for the public to have access to the progress of the new building.

3). New Webpage—Rhodes College has a newly constructed webpage design. The library is located under Academics.

Union University

The library is getting a monthly report from our campus webmaster that

gives lots of statistics on the use of our library database page. The

software used to get this report is called WebTrends Log Analyzer. The

webmaster's office has also developed an online library satisfaction

survey that will administered this spring. It will automate some of the

data tabulation and provide much more data than previous hard copy

surveys. At Union the office of the Provost has started discussions on a

new major initiative around the idea of engaged learning. This

initiative will involve the redevelopment of our first year experience

program, developing an emphasis on service learning, coordinating a

recent grant program in undergraduate research, and adressing the role

of the library. The library director accompanied a team of academic

administrators that attended the recent SACS regional workshop on the

newly adopted Principles of Accreditation. There is a whole new

streamlined process that gives great emphasis to student learning

outcomes.