Director's Memo
January 21, 1998 1997/98-No. 9
Thanks to Service Desk Staff My sincere thanks goes to the Service Desk staff who flexed their schedules during Finals Week to serve an additional 216 people in six additional hours.
Teaching Effectiveness Interest Group (T.E.I.G.) The library will be hosting the Teaching Effectiveness Interest Group on Tuesday, January 27 from 1:30 to 2:30 and again on Wednesday, January 28, from 1:00 until 2:00. Both sessions will take place in room 241 and both will feature information and demonstrations on the following topics: Horizon OPAC, EBSCOhost, Ei Village, Uncover Reveal, and the BI program. All staff are invited to attend one or the other of these sessions.
Emergency Phones The campus "emergency" phones are being installed today on the post near the elevators on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors. Users will be referred to the Service Desk (x6505) for assistance. We will also post the back cover of the campus phone directory by each phone.
Staffing News Cathy Patrick is now the government documents cataloguer. The documents processing position (20 hours/week) is open and available. Cyn Balyeat continues as the student assistant for public assistance on the second floor. She works Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:30 until 8:00.
Building Renovations Copies of the current draft of the architectural program statement for the renovation have been distributed for comments. The architect has indicated that we will probably be remodeling the fourth floor of the library this summer. No timetable has yet been revealed for the project. It is somewhat difficult to plan around a project that has no specifics, but it does appear that the following will have to happen: 1) We will have to find a new home for the people and the collections housed in the rooms at the back of the fourth floor since these rooms will all be eliminated. These include four faculty offices, seven faculty carrels, and eight library storage and/or archives rooms. 2) We will have to find a new temporary home for Marilyn Murphy and the special fine arts materials. 3) We will have to move the books, M-PC or so to make room for the new electronic information training center and computer operations area. The architect told me that a library addition is still being planned for the future. It is not included in this current project.
Ruth As you know, Amy and Judy visited with Ruth on Wednesday and took along a wonderful assortment of goodies from generous people both in the library and across the campus. As Judy has noted in her memo to all, Deb Kelley arranged free installation and a month's free service for cable TV. We will try to subsidize this service with donations until Ruth returns to work. Amy says that Ruth is unable to have citrus products or items with vinegar. She does, however, enjoy peaches (canned in lite syrup), Stauffer frozen entrees such as macaroni and cheese and any chicken entree, and soups.
DDS and the Demise of the CVAX The IU Task Force on User-Initiated Interlibrary Loan have narrowed their choices to the Ameritech RSS System and the CIC Virtual Electronic Library/OCLC Direct Request Systems. The Task Force hopes to make a final recommendation by the end of February with implementation planned for July, 1998. Assuming this timetable holds, it would of course correspond with the demise of the DDS system on the CVAX at IPFW. Current plans call for request forms to be installed on the library web server in July. The completed forms would be emailed to OCLC's ILL Review File for records management.
Document Delivery Turn-Around Time Congratulations to the DDS staff who continue to do a great job paring down the turnaround time for DDS materials. The following chart shows the total number of days required.
DDS Turn-Around Time
Dec. 1966 Dec. 1997
Photocopies
Faculty 10.67 8.37
Graduate Student 8.98 7.47
Undergrad 8.70 7.20
Staff 9.33 8.29
Other 9.98 10.77
Books
Faculty 10.02 8.40
Graduate Student 8.73 7.13
Undergrad 8.19 8.76
Staff 9.76 10.01
Other 8.76 7.16
INSPIRE The infogate menus will soon list all of the databases included in the EBSCOhost package for IU. The INSPIRE gateway is now up (http://www.inspire-indiana.net) and features access to the entire suite of databases available via the INSPIRE product, including Colliers Encyclopedia and the general audience and children's audience subsets of EBSCOhost.
Library Subcommittee The Library Subcommittee will meet on January 27 at 12 noon in Kettler 108A. The Subcommittee will discuss a possible resolution regarding the library cost to support new academic programs. Professor David Oberstar is the Subcommittee chair this semester.
