WALTER E. HELMKE LIBRARY
Director's Memo
October 31, 2003 2003/2004 - No. 2
Building Renovation Update
As of this writing, the Q-Z serials are all on the fourth floor. The technical services area is almost done. The furniture will arrive this Friday and Haworth will install the workstations on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 3-4. Technical services staff should begin moving into the space immediately. However, because of network delays, Judy, Brandy, Barbara and Karen will remain in their current offices until around December 1. (Carolyn and Jen will have a temporary computer connection in the new area, but no phones.) We will relocate the special collections to the new second-floor conference room and the faculty publications to room 152. Telephones in the offices will be installed on Nov. 10 and in the processing area on or around December 1. Tear-down of the rooms at the back of the second floor begins on November 17. Tear-down of the serials area will follow, around December 8. Carpeting begins again at the back of the second floor on December 8. Then we move lots of books again. The new conference room on the second floor will be used only by the Office of Academic Affairs through January. We will not have access except for special collections needs.
Council of Head Librarians (CHL) Meeting, October 10, 2003
Privacy Policy Report Lou Malcomb presented the draft Privacy Policy for the Indiana University libraries. It is obvious that the committee drafting the policy relied heavily on the one we had already created. We are now being asked to review the system policy and "align it with reality." I will ask the library's Privacy Policy Task Force to reconvene to accomplish this task. Members are P. Sandstrom (chair), S. Arvin, C. Truesdell, J. Saltsman, and C. Smith.
Government Publications and Information I was asked to prepare and present a discussion brief on government publications issues for Indiana University. One specific request from GPO to the ARL library directors is for ideas on what support GPO should provide to depositories that will make it worth our while to continue in depository status when nearly all materials are online. The CHL recommended that I ask IU documents librarians for ideas and report these back to the CHL. The CHL also recommended that we proceed immediately to build a full U.S. depository collection in the ALF and also a full Indiana documents collection. Finally, the CHL recommended that we develop a plan for an Indiana documents digitization project. IU librarians began discussing these projects at the Depository Library Conference, Oct. 20-23 in Washington D.C. and will begin meeting regularly to accomplish these tasks.
Library Instruction The CHL agreed that it is time to establish a library instruction cohort group since there is much duplication of effort within the IU system. Associate Dean Harriet Hemassi will call this group together for the first meeting.
OneStart OneStart is IU's customizable portal (http://onestart.iu.edu/my/start.do). There is a really neat tutorial for this. Check it out. OneStart has some information that is "immutable" (one immutable link is access to the libraries) and some categories of information that are nearly completely customizable. They are currently setting up an advisory group with members from each campus. At this point IPFW people are not part of the central authentication service (CAS) and therefore cannot use this portal, but the concept is one that we (the Information Technology Policy Committee) have discussed for IPFW as well.
Common Database Program The job description for the new electronic resources manager has been posted and we have received a few applications. We are looking at ways to attract better, more experienced candidates into the pool. The business database project has identified the most-desired databases for the IU business programs and is now seeking cost information. Ann Bristow demonstrated the ProQuest New York Times database to an enthusiastic audience. We now have test access until November 30 and I encourage everyone to try it out. The ProQuest package offers us a one-time archive fee and an annual fee. The annual fee for us for both the historic and current file would be around $5300, about $900 more that we currently pay for the microfilm. The current file also includes the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Integrated Access The IU Libraries are investigating integrated access (federated searching) and link resolver vendors. (In the Integrated Information Foraging Environment we would call these discovery and delivery tools). Marla has been attending demonstrations that are being held in Indianapolis during October and November. IU hopes to have a link resolver (such as SFX) implemented in the spring semester and a federated search engine ready for implementation during 2004-2005. Marla will distribute information about test or demo sites as they become available. One such site is linked off the Purdue Library home page.
Promotion and Tenure Review Committee Recommendations Marty Rosen (IU-SE) and I gave a brief report on the review committee's report that was sent to the dean and the Indiana University Library Faculty Committee (IULFC) in early October. I have distributed the report to the librarians.
Congratulations to ...
Marla Baden for her presentation at the Midwest Health Science Librarians Conference on the topic of managing electronic journals; Pamela Sandstrom for her invited presentation for the plenary session at the annual conference of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Her topic was "Anthropological Approaches to Information Systems and Behavior." The topic of the session was "Humanizing Information Technology: New Technological Issues at Play;" Tiff Adkins and Sue Skekloff for their presentation at the Ohio Library Association annual conference in Columbus. Their topic is the IPFW train-the-trainer model.
Announcements
The IUCAT Request Delivery service will be fully implemented on Sunday, November 23. The search has begun for a new director of the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA). As a member of the Executive Committee, Cheryl Truesdell is on the search committee.