Director’s Memo
December 3, 2004 2004/2005 - No. 3
Announcements
Holiday Party, Friday, December 17, 12 noon until 3:00. Watch for details from Social Committee.
Book requests from Faculty are due by Friday, December 3.
Annual Reports for untenured librarians are due by January 1.
Annual Reports for tenured librarians are due by January 15.
Special Needs deadline is Monday, January 24
Welcome, Shannon and Graham
I am delighted to welcome Shannon Johnson and Graham Fredrick as our newest regular (albiet part-time) library employees. Both began their new appointments on Monday, November 29. Shannon is the DDS Assistant. She will also continue to work her Service Desk hours. Graham is now officially the technical support person for DDS and REX and is our third information assistant for the Service Desk. He will also continue to work his former part-time hours both at the Service Desk and in support of our Web projects.
Thanks
My sincere thanks go to Judy Graf and the Homecoming Committee who decorated the library (and un-decorated it, too). Both the decorations and the homecoming quiz were very creative and certainly worthy of a prize. There’s always next year. My equally heart-felt thanks go to Judy Graf and the Social Committee for initiating a successful holiday stocking project.
Building Update
The good news is that during the recent deluge, there was no hint of Lake Helmke on the first floor. The bad news is that almost every other floor experienced some rain damage. The next round of moves is about to unfold in the library:
1) The shift of the collections on the third floor continues as time permits.
2) On December 6 we will move Pamela and Tiff to temporary quarters. Pamela will move into Cheryl’s office and Tiff will occupy the Science Information Center consulting area on the fourth floor. Their computers and telephones will go with them.
3) On December 10, DDS staff will move to the new area by the Service Desk. This move will also include moving the videos so that Chris will have easy access to the Service Desk.
4) During the week of December 13, Tiff’s workstation furniture will be disassembled and stored. The contractors will begin lifting and storing the carpet squares in the offices to be torn down. The tear-down of the offices will begin on December 20 and construction will take approximately six to eight weeks. With any luck, the entire reference staff will be in their new homes by the middle of February.
5) In the meantime we are designing a new look for the Service Desk. There are no funds for the Service Desk project this fiscal year, but we are hoping to complete the project in the next fiscal year. The biggest challenge to re-designing the Service Desk is trying to determine what the library will be like in the next five years or so. We are making several major assumptions, the biggest being that we will have self-checkout of library materials and that materials currently available on VHS and CD will mostly be available directly from the Internet in a few years.
6) When the construction is completed, we will move the microform cabinets to the room Chris Smith now occupies and along the back outside wall of the new offices. We will also move the microfilm readers to Chris’ former office.
7) That will free up the microform reading room as well as the area outside the room where the film and fiche are now stored. We are currently discussing moving the non-book media and/or special collections into the room and a browsing area for CDs outside the room. We will expand the OPAC area and move the printers from the Service Desk to this area as well.
Remnant Trust
I goofed. Big Time. My reading of the material from the Remnant Trust was that they were re-scheduling the exhibit from the Spring of 2004 to Spring 2005. Instead, they were looking for a confirmation from IPFW and I never provided it. So now, in spite of the wonderful work Karen Millis, Larry, and others have done in planning the exhibit and how we can effectively use it, we will not have it at all, at least not in the near future. I am truly sorry for my oversight.
Federated Searching
IU is in the process of implementing the SIRSI SingleSearch federated search engine. As Mary Popp has reported to us, "we at IU are slowly learning what we can and cannot do with the system. A pilot test currently under way is meant to get at least something out on all campuses to see how users interact with it while we work on what we can do." IPFW’s first implementation of SingleSearch should be available around the end of the semester and will include:
ABI/Inform Global Suite
Academic Search Premier
ERIC
Ingenta
Lexis-Nexis Academic
MLA International Bibliography
PsycINFO
WorldCat
IUCAT
Common Pool of Databases
At the Indiana University Board of Trustees meeting in early November, the trustees again reiterated the importance to them of establishing a common pool of databases across IU campuses. Dean Thorin reported that Lynn Hufford had been hired as the Electronic Resources coordinator and that he is working with representatives on each campus to define a group of databases that should be available to all based on the common requirements of the undergraduate curriculum. At its October meeting the CHL was not very enthusiastic about the initial proposed list of resources for the Common Pool. They asked Lynn Hufford to create a more extensive list of resources in support of general education courses on all campuses including bibliographic databases, full-text journal collections such as Project Muse, e-books, reference sources, and perhaps other media. All of the CHL directors are hesitant about giving up control of their local funds to contribute to the pool. I believe we need to see a total savings, even though we may even receive access to things we would not normally be interested in to accomplish this.
Metadata
Librarians, The Screen Design Group has established metadata standards for library Web pages. The standards require that you submit a page abstract and keywords for each document you post to the Web. (Include this information in your BugNote.) These metadata elements are essential for document retrieval. Since you are the most knowledgeable about the content of the document you are posting, then you are the one who has to provide the necessary metadata. I count myself in the reminder.
New IPFW Web Site
The university’s new Web site design will be launched later this month. A “sneak preview” should be available from the current home page by finals week. The new site is organized by audience (current students, prospective students, faculty & staff, alumni & donors, community partners, and visitors) and offers five topic areas that are carried forward on the headers of the secondary pages. Only the upper-level pages have been re-designed and we estimate that it may take one to three years to complete the re-design project. So, in the meantime we will still link to many older pages. In the new design, every school and department will follow the same template for their initial page so that there will be consistency, not only in the information provided, but also in the navigation and the style of presentation. In addition to the Web site, the MyIPFW portal page for students has already been launched and a page for faculty and staff is under development. The student page gives students the opportunity to forward their e-mail to a non-university address. It also lists the name of their academic advisor, provides their course schedule information, and offers direct links to several parts of the library’s Web site. The chancellor has sent a memo to all students explaining the new MyIPFW page and the official e-mail policy.
Future of Government Documents
The Council of Head Librarians has established a task force on government documents charged with creating a new vision for preservation and delivery of government documents and information in the Indiana University system. Specifically, the task force is asked to
1) provide a proposed plan and timeline for eliminating duplication of electronic records in the Marcive profile for e-only documents...”
2) Delineate the pros and cons of reducing the number of print copies of U.S. government publications retained permanently by the IU Libraries. Determine criteria and processes for retention of more than one permanent print copy;
3) Outline the implications of using the ALF as shelving location for print copies not needed onsite with the goal to keep at least one copy of every print document in ALF. Evaluate whether all print documents are to be considered, especially superseded documents which are not required to be retained by depository regulations and U.S. federal documents not received through the depository system.
4) Define delivery standards and "restricted use" criteria as they relate to U.S. government publications across the IU Libraries.
5) Examine the issues of shared cataloging responsibilities for these publications among IU Libraries and for shared records management responsibilities.
Lou Malcomb and I chair this task force and Cheryl Truesdell is a member.
