The Information Commoner: Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground, February 2011

              Information Commoner February 2011
Volume 5, Issue 6
Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground
In This Issue
Announcements 2
Department News 2
Mike’s Message
Because only a percentage of enrollment increases are built into the base
budget (to avoid any future cuts if enrollment should drop), each year the
university has one-time money to spend. This February, we received
$127,000 in one-time money. I foresee this as a regular budget possibility in
the future, so any projects that can be accomplished using one-time money
should be made known.
So what will we do with the money this year? We will purchase laptop
computers, printer/copiers, scanners, a new microfilm reader, eight infopod
PCs, and podcasting equipment. A transcribing turntable, equipment, and
archival shelving along with an unlimited image CONTENTdm license are
slated for Archives.
We will also be moving the second bay of current periodical shelving in May
to make room for additional tall shelving for the legal collection. The current
periodical shelving will be moved forward to the space between the
newspapers and the first bay of periodicals. The legal collection needs to be
moved to regular shelving in order for legal students to use them efficiently.
Finally, we allocated money to electronic reference materials (a definite
trend to the future), added money to individual librarian’s accounts for
collection development, and funded Aimee’s position in Archives to full-time
through June 30. All in all, quite a number of projects accomplished.
What’s Our Policy?
Gun Policy
By Lesli Baker
For the protection of students and staff, any employee who witnesses
someone in the building with a gun should call University Police immediately.
University Police will investigate the situation and determine if the person
has a valid concealed weapons permit or other reason to carry the weapon.
Please do not confront the person directly. To contact the University Police,
dial x911 or x5555 from a campus phone.
2 INFORMATION COMMONER
Announcements
Library Awards
The Library Awards reception will be held March
3, at 1:00 PM in the Timpanogos Room.
Recipients for the Library Aide of the Year,
Special Projects, and Library Employee of the
year will at last be announced.
Who Would Win?
Who Would Win returns this spring with a
Battle of the Bands. Using polls, students will be
able to vote on their favorite acts from bands
and musicians in our collection. The contest
begins March 21, after Spring Break, and
continue until the end of the semester.
ULA Annual Conference
If you would like to attend
Utah Library Association’s
annual conference in Layton,
contact your immediate
supervisor as soon as possible
to make arrangements.
The conference will be held in Layton and runs
from May 11 to 13. A list of programs can be
found online at http://conference.ula.org/,
along with additional information about
speakers, registration, and exhibits.
News from Systems
The Great Migration: From Novell to Outlook
By Casey Cotita
As you all may have
heard, our campus is
leaving Novell behind
and making the move to Microsoft's Exchange/
Outlook platform for email service
(www.uvu.edu/oit/migration). The migration
will take place over the summer. The Library is
currently slated to have all accounts moved the
week of August 15, but this date could change.
The campus IT office has a Outlook training
schedule (www.uvu.edu/oit/migration/training/
outlook.html) for the rest of campus, but I plan
on conducting a couple of our own in-house
training sessions to help us move smoothly as a
team. Dates for Library staff training sessions
are not yet known. But keep your eyes on your
mailbox, we will let you know as soon as dates
are firmed up.
Coming from a campus where I used and
supported Outlook for over six years, some of
the things I look forward to most are the better
address book, calendar sharing, and delegation
tools that we'll have available. I am excited to
be a part of this move and will do everything I
can to make it go as smoothly as possible and
help us get the most out of the new resources
we will have.
INFORMATION COMMONER 3
Streaming Video on ERES
By Alan Stephens
Mark likes to use the phrase “If we build it they
will come” when talking about ERES and this
semester is proof of that. In the three prior
semesters, about 30 videos were posted for
streaming, and we filled the available space on
the ERES server. The Library increased the
amount of storage on the server to 1 Terabyte
last fall. This spring we’ve already posted more
than 40 new videos, and the number is still
growing.
We are still receiving reports of students being
unable to stream the videos off campus. To help
alleviate this problem, we have posted lower
resolution copies of the videos that will
download more quickly than the other copies.
All of the low resolution files can be identified
by the words “lo-res” in the filename.
Media Equipment Collection
By Tony Jaskowick
The library’s equipment collection continues to
grow! Over the last few weeks we’ve acquired
card readers, new headphones, several more
LCD projectors, digital audio recorders, and
even upgraded the SRS kits.
Our previously ordered items have arrived as
well. We now have a lighting kit, new shotgun
microphones, a Cannon T2i (with a fisheye lens
for those fun shots), a new HD camera and
several other goodies including MacBook Pros.
We are always looking for ways to better
improve our services and your voices are heard.
So, don’t be shy. Come on down to check out
some of our gear and, if there’s something that
you’d like to see us have, share your thoughts.
News from Access Services
By Keith Rowley
Acquisitions is really busy placing orders for all
of the requests that have come in, as well as
receiving items as they come from the vendors.
Of course all items that are received have to be
cataloged, and Cataloging is being kept busy not
only with new items, but with donations. The
big art donation from the Utah Museum of Fine
Art is now going through the acquisitions and
cataloging processes.
We recently received a very large donation of
theater books and play scripts from the UVU
Theater Department. These will be processed
once the art books are on the shelves.
The first updates for Safari and eBrary eBooks
for this year were completed without any
glitches. At this time we have 2,442 Safari and
2,693 eBrary online books in our library catalog.
News from Technical Services
4 INFORMATION COMMONER
News from Media
By Christy Donaldson
The beginning of the year is always fabulous for film
buffs. In mid-January, there is the Sundance Film
Festival right here in Utah, followed by the
announcement of the films nominated for Oscars.
Then the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour
comes to campus for two nights, showing the best
films of the previous year on mountain culture and
sports.
I took in a record (for me) 17 film screenings at the
Sundance Film Festival this year over the course of
seven days. Highlights from the festival include the
sure to be controversial film Hot Coffee, which
received a standing ovation during the screening I
attended. Hot Coffee documents the famous
McDonald’s coffee case and shows us the other side
of the story (the side of the story that big
corporations like McDonald’s don’t want you to
know), such as the fact that this was not a frivolous
lawsuit and the woman actually had to have several
reconstructive surgeries to replace burnt areas. It
follows this up with other cases to show just how
our impressions of the American legal system have
been shaped by what corporate America wants us
to think.
There were many standout
documentaries, including Being
Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey,
winner of the Special Jury Prize
for the U.S. Documentary
Competition, about the life of
Kevin Clash and how he went
from an average kid growing up in Baltimore to the
man behind the iconic Sesame Street puppet Elmo.
Buck, winner of the U.S.
Documentary Competition
Audience Award, is the
wonderful life story of Buck
Brannaman, the cowboy who
was the inspiration for the
movie The Horse Whisperer.
During his acceptance of the
award (which happened to be his birthday), he said,
“This is for all of you who have a passion for what
you do.” If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth
Liberation Front, winner of the U.S. Documentary
Editing Award, poses the question of whether all
dissenters should be branded with the label
terrorist. Beats, Rhymes, & Life: The Travels of A
Tribe Called Quest follows the legendary hip hop
band A Tribe Called Quest. And finally, I saw Senna,
a lovely tribute to the legendary Formula One race
car driver Ayrton Senna, which was the winner of
the World Cinema Audience Award for
Documentary Film at this year’s festival.
Among the few dramatic films I saw was the winner
of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, presented
to a director with an outstanding film focusing on
science or technology as a theme. Another Earth is
the story of “the sudden appearance of an alternate
earth.” Also impressive was Benavides Born about a
young woman who wants to use her talent in
powerlifting to get a shot at a college
Continued on next page.
News from Serials
By Sarah Suazo
In honor of February—“the month of
love” (even though Valentine’s Day is over)—
here is a list of things the Serial’s Department
loves:
•  We love when items are shelved correctly.
Orange and green tagged periodicals
shelved in their boxes on the compact
shelves make us very happy.
•  We love when damaged periodicals are
brought to us promptly so that we may
repair them. Many times damaged items
must be repaired with special mending tape
or procedures, due to binding restrictions.
•  We love when staff and student workers
contact us if they have a question regarding
an issue or volume. Often we will have
additional information about the item and
its location that can help the patron. Contact
us anytime you have a question.
Bindery Shipments
We received our first shipment back from
Houchen Bindery, and it looks great. We are
planning on sending another batch near the
beginning of March. As always, if you cannot
locate an item, please check with us as it may be
in the process of being prepared for the
bindery.
INFORMATION COMMONER 5
Continued from previous page.
scholarship and opportunities away from the
small Hispanic Texas town where she grew up.
Margin Call—which is certain
to hit major movie theaters—
is about the cutthroat world
of investment banking with
major actors in it, including
Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany,
Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci,
and Demi Moore. I also saw
the Japanese film Abraxas about a punk rock
musician turned Buddhist monk who has a crisis
of faith when he comes to realize that he can’t
live without music.
I will definitely be adding as many of these films
to the UVU Library's media collection as they
become available. For all you film buffs out
there, I hope you don’t miss the Oscar Award
ceremony on TV on Sunday, February 27. Until
then, try to catch as many as you can that are
still in the theater or have come out on DVD.
News from Reference/Instruction
By Annie Smith
Thanks to one-time funding, the Library was
able to add an important resource to its
offerings: the online edition of The Oxford
English Dictionary. The
Oxford English Dictionary
(affectionately known as
the OED) is a unique
resource that not only
defines every word in the
English language, but also
the histories of each word. The OED contains
etymologies (where words came from),
illustrative quotations, and chronological
definitions that show how word meanings have
changed over time. The OED can be found in the
catalog and on the electronic dictionaries and
encyclopedias page (www.uvu.edu/library/
researchtools/electronic_encyclopedias.html).
The print edition of the OED takes decades for
the organization to finish. (The first edition was
printed in installments between 1888 and 1928.
The second edition was published in 1989.) The
online edition offers faster access to new words
and changing meanings in our constantly
evolving language.
Not only is the online edition more up-to-date,
it is also much easier to use than its 23 volume
print counterpart. The quick search features
allow users to search across the entire
dictionary by word, by definition, and by
category. Advance searching allows users to
search by language of origin, regional dialect
words, usage (colloquial and slang, archaic,
etc.), parts of speech, dates of entry, letter
ranges, and much more.
Users can even improve their vocabularies by
signing up for a Word of the Day. A My OED
feature allows students and faculty to create an
account and save searches and entries, as well
as set session preferences.
For a fascinating history of
this extraordinary
dictionary, check out Simon
Winchester’s The Professor
and the Madman: A Tale of
Murder, Insanity, and the
Making of the Oxford
English Dictionary (PE 1617.
O 94 W 56 1998).
6 INFORMATION COMMONER
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 encouraged.
The deadline for information submittal
is the third Friday of each month. Send
information to Lesli via email.
INFORMATION COMMONER 7
By Catherine McIntyre
We’re making steady progress on our various
projects. Aimee has processed and created
finding aids for twelve (!) collections since she
started in January. Many of these are materials
donated from retired faculty and
administrators, but also include the donations
from each of the previous school presidents.
Each collection has a record in Symphony with
a linked finding aid for more complete
information. The next step for each finding aid
is to add them to our digital collection and thus
also to the Mountain West Digital Library.
Brent is scanning and digitizing the World War
II Veterans oral histories that were done by Dr.
Kathren Brown’s history students several years
ago. We are asked fairly often for copies, and it
can take quite a while to make a copy of the
audio interview. So Brent is getting a jump on
requests by scanning the transcripts and
digitizing the audiotapes, so that retrieval will
be almost immediate. He is also improving the
audio quality of the interviews as he goes
along. We might add the interviews to our
online collections in the near future.
The other oral history projects—the History of
Utah Peace Activists, the Vietnam Era, and the
Utah Women’s Walk, continue. Brent went to
the Walden Liberal Arts School in Provo to
record Dr. Bill Cobb and several other Vietnam
War veterans speak to the students as part of a
panel. Upcoming interviews in March for the
Utah Women’s Walk will include Dr. Reba Keele
of UVU’s Public and Community Health
Department, and Mrs. Anne Leavitt, the
mother of former Utah governor Mike Leavitt,
who also served as Administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency and
Secretary of Health and Human Services.
We “re-discovered” a part of a previous
collection, the E. Mark Bezzant Collection,
which consists of a number of Asian artifacts.
There are Chinese, Korean, and Japanese coins;
opium and incense containers and burners;
decorative boxes; toothpick holders; and
Buddha shrines, made of porcelain, ivory,
wood, and bronze. Aimee has written a
Continued on next page.
Porcelain toothpick box (c. 1737-1795, Qiánlóng
Reign, Qing Dynasty). From the Bezzant Collection.
Wood and ivory opium box (ca. 1662-1723, Kangxi
Reign, Qing Dynasty). From the Bezzant Collection.
News from the Sutherland Archives
descriptive container list, with assistance from
Shuyi, who helped translate many of the Chinese
characters and put the objects in historical context.
Brent is photographing the objects from all angles,
with the goal of creating an online exhibit of the
materials, as well as an upcoming exhibit in the
Archives. To see a detailed description of the
artifacts, visit www.uvu.edu/library/docs/
BezzantArtifactsAR355Bez.pdf.
We’ve received a small donation of papers,
trophies, and plaques from the Utah Athletic Club
of the Deaf. Aimee is working with Dr. Bryan
Eldredge’s intern, Timber Anderson, to process it.
We expect to start receiving documents soon from
the United States of America Deaf Basketball
Association. UVU’s Deaf Studies program is growing
and, according to Dr. Eldredge, having these types
of collections will help put UVU on the national map
in terms of deaf culture materials.
Brent and I went to Orem Public Library earlier this
month to help train several of their employees to
use CONTENTdm. Orem Public Library already has a
digital collection of historic photographs, which we
are hosting for them, but they are ready to add
more images to this collection and have new people
doing it now. One of the people is Nicole Sharp,
who used to work here at UVU Library quite some
time ago. We’re looking forward to assisting them
in adding new content.
And finally, we added our first art collection to our
digital collections. “Infinite Beauty: Art Inspired by
Mathematics” was created to showcase an art
exhibit curated in 2009 by Kathryn Van Wagoner,
manager of the Math Lab (http://
contentdm.uvu.edu/cdm4/browse.php?
CISOROOT=/Infinite). A report of the exhibit will be
published in the Journal of Mathematics and Art,
and there will be a reference to the online archive
in it.
INFORMATION COMMONER 8