The Information Commoner: Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground, 2009 Summer.

              Information Commoner
Summer 2009
Volume 4, Issue 7
Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground
In This Issue
At Your Service 2
Announcements 3
Department News 3
Tech Tip 9
Employee Spotlight 10
Vacation Schedule 11
Brag Box 11
Mike’s Message
What’s Our Policy
The annual all-staff summer retreat will
be held at Canyon Park, Building L (the
Culinary Arts School, or the old
WordPerfect campus) on Friday, July
31. We will be doing our annual review,
some AA/EEO required training so that
everyone is eligible to sit on search
committees, and other fun stuff.
At some point I would like to ask for
ideas reflecting thinking outside the
box. For example, some libraries are
starting to eliminate their reference
collections altogether. Some are merging the Reference and Circulation Desks
together. Why do we do things that way, or this way? What should we eliminate?
Just quit doing? What should we be adding? What makes sense, and what doesn’t?
Do we simply do things a certain way just because that’s the way we’ve always done
them? We are quickly moving this summer to Symphony. What opportunities, such
as electronic ordering, does this offer? What new ways of doing things will be
presented? I’ll be looking for all the answers, so put on your thinking caps between
then and now.
Safe Hiring
By Lesli Baker
UVU is now requiring Safe Hire training for all employees who serve on hiring/
search committees, and every committee must also have a trained AA/EEO
(Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employment) representative who can assist
with UVU policy and state and federal employment law compliance. Safe Hire
trainings will include an introduction to employment law and focus on practical
application in UVU hiring/search committees. In the very near future, HR will be
combining Safe Hire training with AA/EEO training, and any employee may act as a
committee member or as an AA/EEO representative. HR has agreed to provide Safe
Hire training for all Library employees at our July retreat.
2 INFORMATION COMMONER
Readers' Advisory
By Annie Smith
As academic librarians, we don’t often get to
recommend a book to a student just for fun. But
with summer upon us, we may get the opportunity
to put on our readers’ advisory hats.
Historically, readers’ advisory was about
recommending the “best” books, i.e. books people
ought to read. Today’s RA is about matching books
to people’s tastes and interests. In order to do this,
we have to ask questions to find out what our
patrons really want, what appeals to them in a book.
Some good questions include:
•  What was the last good book you read?
•  What did you like about it?
•  What are you in the mood for?
•  What don’t you like to read?
The purpose of these questions is to get a feel for
what our patrons do and do not enjoy in a book. Do
they like novels about families? Will they only read
non-fiction about World War II? If they read
mysteries, what is their tolerance level for violence?
(I have learned from experience that this last
question is an important one.)
Once you’ve got an idea of
what they’re looking for in a
book, we have several guides
to genre fiction in the
Reference and General
Collections to help give you
ideas of books to suggest. We
have guides for horror, science
fiction, fantasy, graphic novels,
historical fiction, short fiction, series, and children’s
and teen fiction.
There are also some great online tools that we can
use to get more ideas. Barnes & Noble’s Browse
Books feature lets you find books by genre, setting,
awards won, age level, and other criteria
(www.barnesandnoble.com/subjects/subjects.asp).
Amazon’s Also Bought recommendations can be
used to help find books similar to ones our patrons
enjoy. These bookseller sites are also useful because
they often include reviews and summaries.
Another great online tool is the LibraryThing
BookSuggester (www.librarything.com/suggester).
To get suggestions, type in the title of a book the
patron likes in the search box, and LibraryThing will
come up with database- and user-recommended
books. LibraryThing also has the UnSuggester
(www.librarything.com/unsuggester), which also
shows books that a patron might want to stay away
from.
Recommended Reading
Chelton, M. K. (2003). Readers advisory 101: a crash
course in RA: common mistakes librarians make
and how to avoid them, Library Journal,
11/1/2003. Retrieved 26 May, 2009 from http://
www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA329318.html.
Trott, B. (2008). Building on a firm foundation:
readers' advisory over the next twenty-five
years. Reference & User Services Quarterly 48(2):
132-135.
At Your Service
INFORMATION COMMONER 3
News from Reference/Instruction
Reference Tips
By Trevor Young
Keystrokes
Hands off that mouse! You’re going to give yourself
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome with all of that pointing and
clicking. The Window’s operating environment features
many keystrokes which will enhance and accelerate
most of your day-to-day computer use. Here are some
I’ve found handy while teaching and working at the
Reference Desk:
Find (Ctrl + F): The find function works with most
applications in the Microsoft Office Suite as well as
Internet browsers. When I am faced with an Excel file or
a web page with a sizeable amount of information, and I
know the exact word or phrase I’m looking for, I hit Ctrl
+ F (look for the search box to appear) and type the
word(s), which will be instantly highlighted on the page.
Forget scanning pages with a fine toothed comb. I find
this particularly helpful on pages chock full of links. (If
only this worked on paper…)
Alt + Tab: Instantly flip to the previous window with no
clicking! Depress the Alt key with your left thumb. Then
hit the Tab key with a free finger. Pretty cool, eh? But
wait, there’s more. If you continue to hold the Alt key
and repeatedly press and release the Tab key, a menu
representing the various active windows will appear in
the center of your screen. Keep hitting Tab until you
highlight the desired window, then let go. Master this
trick and you will find it much easier to navigate your
computer’s desktop. This can be particularly important
when patrons are lining up for your help.
For more keystrokes, visit www.bltt.org/accessibility/
win_keystrokes.htm.
In Defense of Wikipedia
We’ve all heard (sometimes from our own mouths) how
academia looks down on Wikipedia. Citing Wikipedia is
tantamount to believing the stories of Baron
Münchhausen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Baron_Munchausen). The articles are written by unpaid
Continued on next page.
Announcements
Librarians’ Retreat
On June 8, the Librarians will be taking the day to
strategize and discuss Library services.
Staff Retreat
We will hold the annual Library retreat on July 31 at the
Building L in Canyon Park (formerly the WordPerfect
Campus). Remember this is an important day for
strategic planning, and all employees need to attend.
See Mike’s Message for more information.
Canyon Park, where the retreats will be held
4 INFORMATION COMMONER
Continued from previous page.
volunteers and, until 2005, could be edited 100%
anonymously (now, one needs to log in to avoid
having their IP address made public). Contributors
have nothing riding on the accuracy or reliability of
their own prose. However, there exists a phalanx of
editors within Wikipedia which do check the
accuracy and reliability of content. The damage is
done when a researcher cites Wikipedia before the
information has been verified. Because of
Wikipedia’s open editing model, which has caused a
number of incidents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Seigenthaler_incident), it has come under
considerable criticism where other sources have not.
We forget that most encyclopedias, especially the
general use type, were never meant to be used as
primary source material. Although there is an
editorial process involved, it is not on the same level
as a peer-review process. There’s simply no need for
it. Not only should we avoid citing Wikipedia, but
most encyclopedias should not be used as one’s only
source. Encyclopedias present drastically condensed
versions of important scholarship. This creates a
quick and easy way to learn important names,
theories, facts, and movements. We forget how
encyclopedias are meant to be used, as a wonderful
and logical place to begin a research project. As long
as we explain that encyclopedias are where we
begin our research, we should feel free to direct our
patrons to Wikipedia as well as the print
encyclopedias.
UbiDuo Face-to-Face Communicator
By Annie Smith
The Reference Desk is now the home to a pair of
UbiDuo Communicators. These machines are
designed to help us assist hearing impaired students.
Essentially, these machines allow the librarians and
the students to chat to each other. Hearing impaired
students, for the most part, have already been
taught how to use these machines and know to look
for the UbiDuo Face-to-Face Communicators.
To talk with a student, use the arrow keys in the
lower right of the keyboard to highlight the “In
Range” box and hit enter. (The “In Range” box looks
like a target.) An intermediary screen may pop up,
but you will eventually be taken to a chat window
where you can talk with the student.
If you would like to print out your conversation, use
the USB cable in the UbiDuo bag (kept by the
computer on the north side of the Reference Desk
for now) to connect the machines to the desk
computer. You can then transfer a transcript of the
document to the computer and print it.
By Keith Rowley
Everyone in Technical Services is very busy doing
training on Symphony. We really haven't learned
enough to know how cataloging and acquisitions will
eventually work but we're really impressed with the
reports feature in Symphony.
A pair of UbiDuo Communicators
News from Technical
Services
INFORMATION COMMONER 5
By Christy Donaldson
At the MPLA conference I presented a session on
Managing Media. The following list is from the
resources handout:
Copyright, know your rights:
•  UVU Media Copyright Concerns:
www.uvu.edu/copyright/copyright_format/
media.html
•  Copyright Advisory Network: http://
librarycopyright.net/wordpress/
•  ALA Copyright: www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/
offices/wo/woissues/copyrightb/
copyright.cfm
•  ALA Library Fact Sheet 7, Video and
Copyright: www.ala.org/library/fact7.cfm
Where to find video reviews:
•  Video Librarian: www.videolibrarian.com
•  Booklist: www.booklistonline.com/
default.aspx?page=media
•  Library Journal: www.libraryjournal.com/
community/Video%
2fDVD+Reviews/47117.html
•  Educational Media Reviews Online: http://
libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/search.asp
•  Movie Review Query Engine:
www.mrqe.com
•  Metacritic: www.metacritic.com
Video vendors and list of vendors:
•  Streaming Video Vendor list: www.ala.org/
ala/mgrps/rts/vrt/vrtconferenceinfo/
streaming_vendors.xls
•  Video Distributor Database:
www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/
Distributors.html
•  Video Librarian Distributor Database:
www.videolibrarian.com/plus/
distributors.html
•  SUU Library’s DVD & Video Vendor list:
www.myhq.com/public/m/u/multimedia/
Other Media resources:
•  National Media Market: www.nmm.net.
Industry conference where you can meet
with over 50 of the nation’s top educational
media producers and distributors and get
some great show discounts on your videos.
•  Internet Movie Database: www.imdb.com.
Great resource on feature films.
•  A/V Geeks: www.avgeeks.com. They have
over 22,000 educational 16mm films, many
short films offered online or in DVD format.
•  Re:frame: http://reframecollection.org.
Great source for independent and
alternative films, blog, and film lists.
Free online video resources:
•  Google Video search: http://
video.google.com
•  Most major broadcast networks or shows:
examples www.abc.com, www.nbc.com/
video , video.nationalgeographic.com, etc.
•  Hulu: www.hulu.com
•  YouTube: www.youtube.com
•  Snag Films: www.snagfilms.com -
documentaries.
•  National Film Board of Canada:
www.nfb.ca/explore-by/title/
News from Media
6 INFORMATION COMMONER
By Catherine McIntyre
It’s been very busy in Archives and Digitization the
past few months.
Working with Students
During Spring Semester I worked with some of
Professor Lyn Bennett’s History students to set up
five hours each of required hands-on working
experience in the Archives. Ten students
participated. They worked at transcribing oral
history interviews, updated Archives records in
Horizon, and created inventories of new collections
that had come in, such as materials on the protests
against the MX Missile system and newspaper
clippings about Michael Moore’s appearance at
UVSC.
Committees and Conferences
I was on the ULA Programs Task Force for the UALC
Digitization Committee, and we had some great
programs accepted for ULA, covering topics such as
supporting digitization, using Flickr to promote
digital collections, and long-term preservation of
digital assets. I also had a poster session entered,
about my experience of working with the Springville
Museum of Art’s library to involve and connect them
with the Mountain West Digital Library and grant
By Trevor Morris and Judy Robertson
Access Services has begun training on Symphony.
Alan has taken on the thankless task of making sure
all supervisors do the training. Shelf reading,
inventory, and map tattle-tapping are winding down.
We would like to thank all the Library aides and
supervisors who worked hard on these projects.
Judy has finished the Library aide exit survey. We are
excited to have Claudine back. She has been busy
harassing everyone to make up for lost time,
especially Mike.
Spring wedding season is upon us and Library aides
are getting married. Hillary Smith married Scott
Dastrup on Saturday, May 23. James Kemer married
Brenda Sanjuan on May 8th. They are making their
home in this area and James is working for the
Library this summer. Melissa Stevens married Gene
Curtis Ledbetter on May 5th. They are living in the
area and both are involved in theater. Anyone
wishing to contribute to a gift card can do so
through Judy. Please excuse their excessive
happiness and post-marriage distraction until they
settle.
We have 21 Library aides working for Access
Services this summer. Brad Frank is back, Debra,
Gus, Gideon, Gerri, Hongmi, James, John, Kayla,
Kuki, Larissa, Liliana, who is house hunting and
chaperoning for children’s singing group, Lupe,
Michael (is doing an internship in Europe), Mariah,
Patricia (she presented at the Geological Society
Conference), Rory, Stefani, Shawn and Larissa (are
going to Philadelphia and Mt. Vernon, the National
Zoo and Aquarium, Gettysburg), Shannon (Shannon
is expecting her second baby a boy), and Daniel.
They are hard working, dedicated library aides and
we are happy to have them working for us this
summer.
News from Access Services
News from the George Sutherland Archive
INFORMATION COMMONER 7
Continued from previous page.
funding organizations in an effort to get their library
collection organized and catalogued in preparation
for digitization.
We hosted a meeting of the Utah Manuscripts
Association May 14. One topic that UMA is very
active in is promoting Utah Archives Month, held
every October. This year’s theme is “Documenting
the Human Experience,” which each institution can
tailor to best fit their collections. For our Utah
Archives Month events, I’m thinking of working with
Dr. Kathryn French to promote the oral history
project she is working on, which is interviewing past
and present peace activists in Utah.
In November we are going to be hosting a workshop
with the Utah State Historical Records Advisory
Board (USHRAB) on doing oral histories. It will be
given by Kent Powell, who is the State Historian at
the Utah State Historical Society. That should be a
very popular workshop—more details to come.
I attended the annual Conference of Intermountain
Archivists (CIMA) at BYU on May 15. I attended
sessions on documenting scarce resources that deal
with water management in the West, developing
and maintaining digital collections, usability testing
of digital collections, and the huge process of
bringing the Joseph Smith Papers Project to fruition.
I will be attending the CONTENTdm Users Group
meeting June 4-5 at the University of Nevada, Reno,
which offers practical sessions and workshops for
those who use CONTENTdm as their digital content
management system, as we do.
Digitization
We have met some important digitization project
goals with our digitization partners. Provo City
Library needed to show progress, so we were able to
complete the first 49 images and metadata for
them. The deadline for their grant funded project is
July. I was also able to complete the project we did
for the Utah Council of Land Surveyors, which was to
digitize a calendar put together by their history
committee. It had to be finished for the meeting of
their History Committee (http://
contentdm.uvu.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/
Surveyors). And the Provo City Recorders meeting
minutes, which will ultimately amount to thousands
of scanned pages, are coming along slowly but
surely. I have a few sections of the indexes and
minutes uploaded, and they are searchable! They
are not in the correct order yet. Their grant funded
project is due in August (http://contentdm.uvu.edu/
cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/ProvoMinute).
Archives
And last but certainly not least, we just received a
big donation of materials dealing with UVU history
from Dr. Mark Bezzant, who is the Assistant Vice
President of the School, College, and University
Partnership. He has collected materials, conducted
interviews with former and current employees
(including Judy!) and much more in an effort to
preserve as much of UVU history as he can. It will be
like Christmas morning to go through that donation!
Catherine’s poster presentation at the
2009 ULA Conference
8 INFORMATION COMMONER
By Tim Rowley
We are planning to purchase several netbook
computers for checkout to library users. They will
check out similar to the way the Toughbook PCs
have. A netbook is a scaled-down laptop PC in most
aspects. They are much smaller—most can fit in a
purse or small backpack. Many use a new
technology called SSD (solid state drive) which
replaces the hard drive with what could be
described as a very large flash drive. They are much
less expensive than notebook computers, costing
about $300 each instead of three to six times that
much for a conventional laptop (the Toughbooks
cost about $2500). I recommend giving them a test
drive when they come in to familiarize yourself. See
Carlos for more information.
Along that line, we have also purchased an external
DVD-combo drive for checkout that can be used
with any netbook or laptop computer. This drive
can read and write CDs and DVDs. It is available for
check out at the Circulation Desk.
Systems, and most of the rest of the Library, is now
in the throes of our Horizon-to-Symphony
migration project. Our project manager is Mark
Stevens, whose "past-life" experience as a
programmer and database administrator could not
have come our way at a better time. Azucena will
be flanking Mark on the project as she moves from
being our Horizon Administrator to being our
Symphony Administrator. Her experience with
Horizon will be indispensable as we trudge though
this arduous and demanding project. Our goal is a
go-live date of August 20th (yes, this year). Stay
tuned for the training dates for your department to
be posted in the near future. Missed training can be
made-up online with recorded sessions, but they
are not as effective as the live training in that they
Continued on next page.
News from Systems
News from Serials
By Wendy Wise
Beginning last month The Christian Science Monitor
newspaper changed from a daily to a weekly
publication format. Because of this change it is now
considered a weekly news magazine and will be kept
in the current periodical collection (AP 2. C 475),
instead of the newspaper collection. There is a
temporary note on the newspaper shelving leading
patrons to its new location. The Christian Science
Monitor’s website address will still be updated daily.
Both changes will be noted in Journals by Title.
Also of note, the call number tab of the current
periodical issues will now say "3rd floor." At times,
journals have been mistaken as a paperback book
and misshelved. Hopefully, this change will result in
fewer of journals being reshelved on the fourth
floor.
Beginning July 1st, Journals By Title, accessible from
the Library's homepage, will have a different look.
Serials Solution 360 Core was chosen as the resource
for managing all the Library's electronic and print
journal titles. More information will be available at a
later date.
INFORMATION COMMONER 9
Continued from previous page.
do not offer interactive exchange with the trainer. Our
thanks to the many people it will take from all library
departments to accomplish this monumental task.
Symphony Project Status Report and Path Forward
By Mark Stevens
The following milestones have been reached for the
Symphony implementation project:
(1) The new server hardware has been specified,
ordered, purchased, and installed.
(2) The Solaris 10 UNIX operating system and Oracle
database environment have been installed by campus
IT specialists. The Symphony installation specialist is
scheduled to install the application modules on the new
server on May 28th. The network firewall ports have
been configured for security as well as the needed local
and remote communications.
(3) We have largely completed the policy document
that configures our new Symphony application and
permits mapping of data from the old (Horizon) system
to the new (Symphony) system. We will submit this
specification to the SirsiDynix data conversion specialist
for final analysis around May 22nd.
(4) We have received the Symphony Workflows client
software (which will take the place of the Horizon
client) and Azucena Aguayo will be installing it first on
the machines of the project team, and then on the
machines of the remaining staff and librarians.
(5) The Symphony "Training Server" has been installed
in the Systems office. This will be made available to all
Library staff for training and study as an example of the
new Symphony system (containing sample library data).
Please press the "pause button" during your training
sessions to reinforce new concepts by experimenting
with this Training Server. You can't hurt it. In fact, we
expect to "refresh" (reset) it periodically to its initial
configuration to rollback any "bad" experiments.
Path Forward: Our main three emphases starting May
25th will be: (a) Symphony Training, (b) Training for
Symphony, and (c) More Symphony Training. The
resulting familiarity with Symphony will permit our
Library staff to properly examine the results of the
upcoming data conversion, preparatory to our eventual
sign-off and acceptance of the production system.
Our thanks to the Symphony project team for their
daily efforts thus far, and into the coming weeks.
Library Workshops
By Carlos Alarco
Basic Workshops in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint will be
held in LI 205 throughout the summer. Reference Desk
staff are strongly recommended to attend. If you feel
you understand the basics, a "Test out" option is
available via a test.
Other topics are also available and all staff/faculty/
students are welcome to these sessions. See website
for more information www.uvu.edu/library/help/
training.html.
Tech Tip
Employee Spotlight: Keith Rowley
10 INFORMATION COMMONER
Background information:
I’m from Orem and I grew up less than a mile from
UVU. At that time there were just open fields and
sand dunes where UVU is now. My friends and I
would walk down 800 South all the way to the
railroad tracks to play. There wasn’t any freeway
there at that time either.
I’ve been married to my wife Priscilla for 33 years
now. We have three adult children and one
grandson.
When did you start working at UVU? What
changes have you seen?
I started working at UVU in July 1992 as the Public
Services Librarian. There were only four librarians at
that time. There was only one electronic periodical
index on only one computer and no full-text articles.
All the periodicals were in one small room, closed
stacks, and a Library worker had to retrieve
requested periodicals, and none of the periodicals
were bound. When I started at UVU we had less
than 9,000 students and only 59,000 volumes in the
Library.
Favorite things about job/UVU
The best part about my job is that I get to do a lot of
different things. (See job duties)
Job duties
As the Technical Services Librarian I supervise the
cataloging and acquisitions departments. I work at
the Reference Desk a certain number of hours each
week. I teach about 10 bibliographic instruction
sessions each semester. I do collection development
for the areas of philosophy, religion, art, music, and
languages. And I coordinate art exhibits for the
Library.
Education
After graduation from Orem High School I went
directly to BYU where I received a BA in Music
Theory. While I was in the Army in Texas I was able
to attend classes at the University of Texas at Austin.
After I got out of the Army I returned to Austin
where I received my Master of Music degree. I later
took 28 semester hours of computer science courses
at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. And even
later I went back to BYU where I got my Master of
Library and Information Science degree. I’ve earned
a total of 349 semester credit hours.
Favorite things to do in your spare time or hobbies
The thing I do most in my spare time is practice on
my harp. I also do a lot of reading.
Any other fun stuff you’re willing to share?
I’ve had formal instruction in French, German,
Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.
Once upon a time I could converse pretty well in all
of them, but now I’m doing good to converse in
English.
Keith Rowley
INFORMATION COMMONER 11
Summer Vacations
Lesli Baker: June 1-5
Claudine Boothe: July 21-23, July 28-31,
August 4-7
Christy Donaldson: June 29-July 3,
July 9-14
Mike Freeman: May 21-June 5, July 22-26
Catherine McIntyre: June 12-15, July 6-15
Judy Robertson: June 26 and 29, July 1-7 or 23-
28, August 20-25, September 1-
8
Keith Rowley: June 22-July 10
Tim Rowley: June 12-19, mid-July
Debbie Short: July 9-14
Annie Smith: June 11-16
Mark Stevens: July 23, September 23-25,
October 5-6, October 19-20
Trevor Young: July 31-August 4
ED I TO R I A L IN FORMA T I ON
The Information Commoner is an internal communication
tool published once a month by and for the Utah Valley
University Library staff. Input from all library staff is en-couraged.
The deadline for information submittal is the third Friday
of each month. Send information to Lesli via email.
BR A G BO X
Mike Freeman Wins Award
Mike Freeman was recently awarded a 2009
Award of Excellence by UVU’s Board of Trustees. A
reception was held for all recipients on April 10.
Congratulations to Ben!
Kudos to Ben Wilson for finishing his Master’s
degree in Library Science. He and wife are also
expecting their first child a girl.
Christy Elected ALA RUSA BRASS Secretary
“The position of BRASS Secretary is a two-year
term commencing with the Mid-Winter
Conference meeting and ending, two years later,
with the Annual Conference. Principal
responsibilities are to take minutes at BRASS
Executive Committee Meetings and to keep the
BRASS Handbook current with Executive
Committee actions."—BRASS Handbook.
Congratulations, Christy!
UALC Named Best in State
UALC won Utah's Best of State in the category of
Educational Institution/Service.