Information Commoner
November 2012
Volume 7, Issue 3
Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground
In This Issue
Announcements
2
At Your Service
3
What’s Our Policy
3
Department News
4
Strategic Planning Highlights
8
Mike’s Message
Christy’s resignation has given us a chance to evaluate and reassign duties assigned to librarians, paying particular attention to a balanced workload and fitting people to their interests and aptitudes. All librarians teach, develop collections, and cover reference in some combination, along with other duties. The demands of “other duties” determine the balance of the previous three. Here are some changes that have been made:
Annie will now coordinate reference service and will select all reference books, both print and electronic. She also chairs the Browsing Committee, collects reference and database statistics, and works on our various newsletters and social media tools.
Ben will take over website management and instructional technology, which includes our online tutorials and podcasting. As you may or may not know, Ben continues to work on a bachelor’s degree in Digital Media here at UVU.
Catherine continues to retreat into the dark cave of Archives with increased activities in oral history, wax cylinder music recordings, university archives, the Mountain West Digital Library, and other issues that demand more and more of her time.
Kim will work with Distance Education issues, assessment, marketing, newsletters, and oversee the Wasatch campus.
Trevor will cover Media and will look at broader issues of collection management, such as collection analysis and ebook packages. He will also oversee stacks management and RFID issues such as inventory and use.
The remaining librarians’ duties will remain the same. We are asking for a new librarian position in PBA that would result in more shuffling. For all of us, the expansion of activity within our areas results in constant evaluation of relative workload. A great example is the ever increasing number of video streaming requests that take more and more of Alan’s time. In light of that, Lesli is examining job descriptions to be sure that they accurately reflect what people actually do. I continue to get positive feedback from the larger university community about the Library and its growing strengths of collection and services, and all the good work you do. Now, back to work! 2 INFORMATION COMMONER
Announcements
Extended Weekend Hours
The Library is once again offering extended weekend hours for finals. We will be open:
Saturday, December 1 8AM to 10PM
Sunday, December 2 2PM to 10PM
Saturday, December 8 8AM to 10PM
Sunday, December 9 2PM to 10PM
Thank you to everyone who volunteered to cover the extra hours! We appreciate your help!
Semester Break Hours
The Library’s hours for the semester break will be as follows:
Friday, December 14 8AM to 10PM
Saturday, December 15 8AM to 5PM
December 17—21 8AM to 5PM
Saturday, December 22 CLOSED
Monday, December 24 CLOSED
Tuesday, December 25 CLOSED
December 26—31 8AM to 5PM
Saturday, December 29 CLOSED
Tuesday, January 1 CLOSED
January 2—3 8AM to 5PM
Friday, January 4 8AM to 10PM
Saturday, January 5 8AM to 5PM
Christmas Party
Don’t miss the Library’s annual Christmas party on Friday, December 21, at 11:30 AM in LI 502. The Library will supply sandwiches. We will post a sign up sheet for potluck items when it gets closer.
PACE Social
The PACE holiday social will be on December 18 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM in the Grande Ballroom. The theme is vintage holiday. Join the rest of campus for lunch, prizes, and holiday nostalgia!
EDITORIAL INFORMATION
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 3
At Your Service
Your Role in Building a Service Culture
By Lesli Baker
We all know how important a service culture is for an organization. But how can we each participate in developing one? We must look at applying some basic principles to what we do each day.
1. Always focus on our students and faculty. A customer focus will affect everything we do, from making decisions to answering the phone. Think about how what you do impacts them.
2. Anticipate what students and faculty need to provide better service and to reduce problems and mistakes.
3. Get involved and take responsibility for situations instead of passing the problem off to someone else.
4. Get to know more about the University beyond the Library. Try to get the big picture of how the Library fits within the University and how what we do impacts the rest of campus.
Study Room Policy
By Lesli Baker
Because the group study rooms and media viewing rooms are so popular during finals, I wanted to remind you about our policies for using these rooms:
Rooms may be reserved for up to four hours per person per 24 hour period.
Groups take priority over individuals using the rooms.
Outside food (such as pizza) is not allowed in the study rooms.
Reserved rooms that have not been claimed after 15 minutes are forfeited, and the rooms will be available on a first come, first served basis.
Doors must remain closed and noise levels must be kept to a minimum.
What’s Our Policy?
By Chelsie Young
Textbook reserve is easily the highest circulating collection in the Library. This semester, Tony Jaskowick has taken on textbook reserves in addition to media equipment reserves, making him the go-to person for all physical reserves. To start things off, he did an inventory of textbook reserve to identify books that were not circulating. In doing so, he was able to weed nearly 20% of the collection. After claiming this new space for growth, he secured $3,000 in new funds for textbook reserve. He looked into our relationship with the Bookstore and discovered the best person in that organization to help grow our textbook reserve collection. This, coupled with the new funds, has allowed us to offer a larger list of titles than ever. To facilitate this, he has also made sure we are advertising the online form for textbook requests. He did all this, and he made it look easy.
4 INFORMATION COMMONER
News from Access Services
By Sarah Rice
Bindery Return
Spanking new volumes have returned from the bindery and have been processed and shelved. There were 2012 issues in this shipment, so they will now be found on the compact shelving instead of the current shelves. We anticipate sending another shipment in December or January.
Annual Projects
Beginning in November and continuing through the Christmas Break, Serials will be working on our annual projects. At this time of year, we begin moving our current issues to the bound periodical shelves. Issues we do not bind get an orange sticker on the call number tab and are moved into boxes in the bound shelves. Some issues get a green sticker on the call number tab and are moved into temporary binders in the compact shelves. The rest of the issues move to Technical Services to await binding.
The important thing to remember when helping a patron locate an issue is to check both sets of shelves, as issues may be found in both areas as we complete our transition projects. If you have any questions about locating an issue, please feel free to call Wendy (x8318), Sarah (x8313), or Debbie (x6336). We will be happy to help you find what you are looking for.
Routed/Borrowed Issues
If you have borrowed or routed issues and they are lying around your office, please return them to Serials or to the current periodicals shelves. Thanks ever so much!
News from Serials INFORMATION COMMONER 5
ContentDM Being Considered for SAS
By Mark Stevens
We are currently weighing the pros and cons of having OCLC host our ContentDM software and data through their Software as a Service (SAS) offering. Today, our Evanced (room scheduling) and our EDS Discovery Tool (which we call "OneSearch") are managed in this manner. In the next two to ten years we may host the majority of our systems application software and data with SAS services of some type. There are potential advantages to this trend. For a nominal annual fee, the application company usually manages all application and operating system updates and patches, response time and downtime issues, file space and processing growth demands, security considerations, as well as system backups and hardware issues. If the SAS company is stable, competent and responsive, the disadvantages are mainly the cost considerations.
UVU’s New Wireless Network
By Azucena Aguayo
UVU implemented a new network to provide wireless internet access on campus. The new system became available November 26 and offers two networks: Wolverine-WiFi and Wolverine-Secure. The system uses the Bradford Persistent Agent, which replaces the Cisco NAC. The old UVU-Open and UVU-Secure networks will be shut down December 20. Any laptop users who would like help changing their default wireless connection to the new Wolverine network, please contact me at x8919.
News from Systems
By Annie Smith
Before everyone rushes off after the semester ends, I have a few announcements:
We’d like to welcome Kim Rollins to the roster as a full-time Reference and Instruction Librarian.
Librarians will be on call during the semester break (December 14—January 5), monitoring reference phone calls, text reference, and LiveHelp from their offices.
This spring, the Library will once again be offering LibraryCraft to students as a means of introducing them to the resources available on our website. The game will run from January 7 to January 25. Please direct any students in need of help to the Reference Desk. We will be running teaser ads on the digital signage, so you may see students getting an early start.
News from Reference/Instruction 6 INFORMATION COMMONER
News from Media
By Trevor Young
So, I’m the new Media Librarian. I believe it’s a good fit. I happen to love media in all its forms. It’s exciting being immersed in all of this. I love the atmosphere of the second floor. I love the way Media has been managed. Christy has left some big shoes to fill. Heather has been wonderful to work with. She is very collaborative and full of ideas. She has been very patient while showing me the ropes. What a fantastic workmate!
I have really been enjoying the collection development aspect of the position. In addition to drawing on my own knowledge, I have been getting plenty of welcome requests both from faculty members and library employees. I’ve been impressed with all of the requests so far. Many of them I would never have thought of myself. As an academic library we cannot fulfill all requests because I am compelled to weigh needs against wants, but so far I’ve found significant value in all of the requests. As long as your requests are defensible by supporting any of our programs, most likely I’ll find a place for them. Keep them coming!
Collection security has been an ongoing struggle. Right now we are working very hard on an evaluation project. We hope to use statistics to identify holes in the system in order to rectify them. Cole and some of the library aides have been very passionate contributors to this project. It’s great to see departments coming together in the pursuit of library improvement. Expect more about this process in the coming months.
Speaking of collaboration, if you have any ideas for Media, please don’t be shy about expressing them. I am always looking for ways to improve this section. Plus, I’d love to be able to work with you.
News from Technical Services
By Keith Rowley
Jennie and Paul spent the week of November 12-16 at BYU for instruction in RDA (Resource Description and Access), the new cataloging standard that becomes official March 31, 2013. This standard adds a number of fields to the MARC record, and our present Symphony configuration isn’t set up for them. We are hoping Sirsi/Dynix will have an upgrade soon to Symphony that incorporates RDA standards.
At present, 48% of our acquisitions allocation has been encumbered or spent. This is right where we should be at this time. Both Shuyi and Christina have stacks of orders to enter. Thanks to all the librarians who have submitted this large quantity of requests. We will get the orders out as quickly as possible. News from the George Sutherland Archives
INFORMATION COMMONER 7
By Catherine McIntyre
On October 18, Phillippe Montalette, President of the Utah Association for the Deaf; Marilyn Call, Director of the Sanderson Community Center; and Jodi Kinner, UAD historian, toured the Sutherland Archives. We had a great visit with them, showed them our facilities, and talked about the possibility of the historical records of the UAD being donated to us. Well, it looks as though they decided that we passed muster, for we see on the UAD website that they have announced that the Sutherland Archives will be receiving their materials: http://utahdeafhistoricaldigitallibrary.weebly.com/the-george-sutherland-archives.html.
The Utah Association for the Deaf was founded in 1909 and has a long and rich history of working with local and national organizations to advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing. We are very excited to have this opportunity to work with the UAD and to expand our connections with UVU’s Deaf Studies program.
We have been hosting and recording a great many oral history interviews this month, as many as three per day on some days! These interviews have been in conjunction with several projects: the Utah Women’s Walk Oral History Project, the Utah Folklore Oral History Project, and the UVU History Book project. One particularly exciting interview was with the Osmonds! Well, two Osmonds: Alan and his son, Nathan. They were interviewed about their mother, Olive Osmond, for the Women’s Walk Project. They had some great stories to tell and
dropped lots of famous names, including how much Elvis Presley loved their mother because she reminded him of his own mother, and how, when touring with the Jackson Five, the Osmonds rode in an old bus while the Jackson Five traveled in a fleet of black limousines. It was a really fun interview to sit in on!
Finally, we hosted a volunteer training session from the Utah State Archives on November 16. As part of our responsibilities as a regional repository, I had invited representatives from local and county governmental agencies, museums, libraries, literacy centers, and archives from Utah, Wasatch, Juab, and Millard counties to attend. The session was well done, focusing on how to creating and maintain a successful volunteer program. One of our own volunteers, Kellie Johnson, talked about her experiences volunteering in the Archives. If anyone is interested in seeing the entire presentation, I have copies of the PowerPoint slides and Brent filmed the presenters in action.
Olive and George Osmond
(Undated photo from JayOsmond.com) By Kim Rollins
Do you have years of data or assessment observations and don’t quite know what to do with the information to make it accessible and useful? Maybe you have some good assessment ideas brewing and just need the right way to track your efforts. The Library will be tapping UVU’s new Insight software to track assessment, accreditation, and strategic planning efforts.
Insight will allow departments and colleges to learn best practices from each other, use assessment data to enhance university programs, and become more united within the University. My goal is to get as many of the Library’s assessments into Insight as possible. This will allow us to more easily view and use the assessment data within the Library from year to year. The planning data entered into Insight from departments, including strategic planning goals, objectives and activities, will be used by UVU administration to determine PBA priorities in the future.
You can take a look at Insight by logging into UVLink, clicking on the Employee tab, then Services & Resources, and then Insight. More information will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, please let me know if you have any ideas or questions on using Insight.
Insight Modules
Accreditation: This module is for document responses and supporting materials for the Northwest and other accreditation standards for all campus programs:
Standards responses
Project progress tracking
Housing of reports and documentation
Department Profile: This module supports ongoing self-study for individual departments:
Information for annual reflection on all aspects of our department’s operation.
Some information will be pre-populated and updated automatically.
Integration with accreditation reports.
Planning Module: This module provides a centralized location for recording, assessing, and documenting goals, objectives, and outcomes:
Unit and program level strategic planning and assessment reports can be linked to University core theme objectives, etc.
The means of assessment and the analysis and use of results can be clearly identified and documented.
Action goals can be linked to objectives and outcomes.
Rubrics are included to provide feedback on the quality of the plans.
Unit assessment and planning information is archived by fiscal year.
Strategic Planning Highlights
8 INFORMATION COMMONER
Utah Valley University Library Collection
