Library Gazette

On Wednesday, November 18, Lynn, Mary Beth, Mary, Chris, Travis, and I traveled across town to visit the recently renovated Coy C. Carpenter Library at the Bowman Gray Campus during their celebratory Open House. The renovation project, which began in June 2009, was completed in three stages, and integrated three departments within the Medical Center: the Library, the Drug Information Service Center (DISC), and the bookstore.

The first stage of the renovation project focused on the entryway and lobby of the Library. The old desk and shelves - and the side wall - were torn out, the recessed bookcases were filled in, a new semi-circular desk was built across the lobby from the old desk location, and two counters with shelves above were installed on the right side of the lobby from the entrance. The wood paneling was painted and new carpeting installed, giving the new entryway and lobby a larger, brighter, more welcoming appearance. The new desk is now the Library’s only service desk, combining the previous three desks: Circulation, Reference, and the Learning Resources Center (LRC). (Circulation and Reference had previously combined desks in July 2008.) The browsing area was moved into the Reference Room where the old Reference desk was located.

Stage two of the renovation project involved moving all the public computers from Classroom C (in the former LRC area) and the Reference Room to a central location, which is visible from the new desk. Classroom C’s wood paneling was also painted, and the space dubbed a quiet study area, which has quickly become a popular spot for students.

The final stage of the renovation project involved moving the DISC from its previous location within the Library (off the copy room) to the former LRC desk and office area, which was reconstructed to create two offices and a central work area. The bookstore moved from the Ground Floor of Reynolds Tower into the old DISC office, and a doorway was created from the Library lobby leading directly into the bookstore. Two sections of walls in the lobby, including the bookstore entrance, were painted a vibrant green as the finishing touch!

Those of us who attended the open house enjoyed visiting with our Carpenter colleagues, touring the Library, and examining two Dorothy Carpenter Medical Archives displays in the Library: an iron lung (similar to this photo), transferred to the Archives in 1996 from NC Baptist Hospital, and the Library’s first public computer, a Sanyo Apple II, manufactured in September 1981. I even took Mary Beth for a ride on the “scary” Stacks elevator!

If the folks in Research and Instruction have looked a bit like deer caught in headlights this semester there is good reason. Our statistics are through the roof for both library instruction ‘one shot’ classes as well as one-on-one personal research sessions. So far this semester we have taught 124 one-shot library instruction sessions to 1928 students. That is 81% of sessions (75% of students) of the TOTAL number we did in the entire 2008-2009 year!! And the same is true of Personal Research Sessions. So far this year we have done 305 Personal Research Sessions which is 73% of the total number from all of last year. (Last year we nearly doubled the number of personal research sessions from the year before). And we still have two weeks to go and many sessions scheduled in those weeks. And it has not just been the Research and Instruction folks who have been participating. Carolyn McCallum, Leslie McCall, Cristina Yu and Erik Mitchell have all taught classes.

We’ve had lots of discussions (around the pots of very strong coffee we brew each morning) about why this is the case, and we feel that it in some way goes back to the new kind of students and faculty Wake Forest is attracting and developing who are not only willing to seek out help, but who are eager to take advantage of help when it is offered. That, coupled with the fact that we are good at our jobs, means faculty keep asking us to teach sessions, and students come back time and time again and tell their friends about us. The long hours, late night emails with students to schedule meetings, hours of prep for instruction sessions and the time spent on creating LibGuides are all worth it when we see the light go on in the eyes of students when they find the exact sources that will help them write their papers or when we have faculty thank us for the help we give their students. We feel this is one of the critical ways we help our students and faculty succeed and it is the heart and soul of our jobs, but we’ll all need a break come the holidays to gear up for it all again in the Spring!

On Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion in Benson about the Boot Camp for Professors. Set in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Boot Camp for Professors is a week-long event where teachers can work on aspects of their teaching philosophy and approach. The TLC pays all the registration and travel expenses. A small town, Leadville, CO is the location, and is the highest town in the US. Why, you may ask, Craig, did you attend this panel? There are two reasons: one I’m a rookie teacher for LIB100; and 2. last summer, Jeff Lerner told me about this workshop after he found out librarians were getting faculty status. It is unclear whether Library Faculty can attend this workshop, but it sounds fabulous-especially for those whose primary work revolves around instruction.

The panel was made up of: Holly Brower (School of Business), Simone Caron (History), Jeff Lerner (TLC, History), and Erica Still (English). Each individual described a week in a dorm at Timberline Campus of Colorado Mountain College, and how hard they worked. They all worked in groups and had homework every night. Topics included deep learning, active learning, over teaching, and rubrics.

Some of Holly Brower ideas were:

1. Questions are the currency of teachers-use them to keep the class moving, emphasize a point, check for retention, or to promote discussion.

2. Evaluate whether you are under or over-teaching by not giving students enough guidance or too much direction.

3. Backward design your courses-ask what your students need to learn to do: ten, how will you know they can understand something at the end of the course, and how can you best help them learn how to do it during the course.

4. Limit lectures to 15 minutes and change your teaching method every 20 minutes.

5. Consider some form of daily accountability (quiz, 3-5 minute writing exercise, etc.)

6. Learn to love them- people are motivated by three things: fear, duty and love.

7. Use multiple methods to promote engaged teaching- 1 minute paper, teach your neighbor, directed paraphrasing, pre-class assignments, etc.

8. Use midterm evaluations

There were lots of other tips like play music before class, stop lecturing, being physically active while teaching helps learning and others. Everyone, without fail, said this camp was hard, but well worth the effort. Keep your eyes on the TLC for announcements about this year.

With plenty of prodding from Patrick, I am slowly resolving cases where loose journal issues are either tied up in string or are falling over in a cardboard box. One such box contained most of the 1966 issues of Carolina Farmer. When I looked inside, I was surprised to discover four issues of Southern Agriculturist from 1841 (also known as The Southern Agriculturist, Horticulturist, and Register of Rural Affairs, Adapted to the Southern Section of the United States). Further investigation with Craig, Megan, and Beth revealed that additional issues are housed in Rare waiting to be cataloged. All the extant issues are now receiving Craig’s tender ministrations before we place them in the secure climate-controlled confines of our soon-to-come storage building. If you can’t wait to read the contents of these tomes, you can peruse the digitized versions through our American Periodicals Series database. (If you’re more interested in Carolina Farmer, you’ll need to wait until it gets back from the bindery.)

RITS 2009 Team Portrait

L-R: Bobbie Collins, Jean-Paul Bessou, Mary Scanlon, Erik Mitchell, Tim Mitchell, Giz Womack, Roz Tedford, Lauren Pressley, Susan Smith, Kaeley McMahan, Barry Davis, Ellen Daugman, Molly Keener, Kevin Gilbertson

Last summer the RITS Team was formed by combining the Research and Information Services and the Information Technology teams. Our initial team retreat was held early-on to help organize the new unit but we met on-campus for just a morning. This fall, after a year of working together, we decided to take our retreat on the road to the Wake Forest Lodge at Fancy Gap, adopting a long-standing Tech Team tradition.

This has been an extraordinary year for the team - one that has seen this new team rise to meet every challenge that’s been thrown at it, including:

• bad economic conditions that caused a hiring freeze that kept positions unfilled for the majority of the year,
• a change to library faculty status for many of the team that came with a new set of additional expectations and responsibilities,
• major consolidation of collections and services on the 4th floor,
• a merged service project with IS that has transformed the ITC area to “The Bridge”
• successful marketing of the library saw a 37% increase in traffic that translated to record demand for BI sessions, Personal Research sessions and other services, and
• a mandate to move toward migrating IT services to the cloud.

It has become next to impossible to find many hours during the week where the 15 RITS team members are available to come together as a group, let alone have a meaningful all-day retreat. Realizing this, 6 months ago we booked the Fancy Gap house and put October 30th on all of our calendars to reserve the day to reflect on our accomplishments and challenges, as well as to look toward the future.

Some RITS members (Giz, Tim, Roz and Susan) formed an advance team and went up the hill to the lodge on Thursday evening to prepare for the larger group to arrive Friday morning. We had the fire burning and breakfast ready when the rest of the group arrived via carpool groups (we missed Sarah who had a family illness that prevented her from coming). We were pleased to include the new team members that luckily (for all of us!) had come aboard when the hiring freeze was lifted in July: Barry Davis ( Coordinator for Multimedia and Digital Production Services), Jean-Paul Bessou (Systems Librarian), and Molly Keener (Scholarly Communication Librarian).

After breakfast, the retreat began with an ice breaker activity (no, it wasn’t a team hike!). We divided into 4 smaller groups. Each person was given a “deck” of personal value cards and was asked to sort each of the values into one of five categories: “always value,” “often value,” “sometimes value,” “seldom value,” or “never value.” Within each group, participants discussed the reasons for their choices and compared similarities and differences. The goal of the exercise was to get people talking about their own value system and how these intersect with each other and with their professional values. An online example of a value sort will give you an idea of the types of values included. Following the group breakout, we reconvened as one large group and talked about which of these values are important to the RITS team as a whole. The values identified as important to the team are: “help others,” “knowledge,” “compassion,” “competence,” “wisdom,” “reflection,” “challenge,” “personal development,” “happiness,” “change/variety,” “community,” and “location.” We found that each of these values may mean different things to each of us, but are all qualities we find important in our professional lives at ZSR Library.

We had set an ambitious list of topics to cover during the day and addressed most of them (with a break for a great buffet lunch), but two main topics seemed to resonate the most with our diverse group, so we ended up giving these the time they deserved:

• The VuFind project. There were important exchanges about the prognosis for continued progress in relation to its current state’s impact on services during the fall semester. The technology end of the team listened to specifics from the public service end of the team that clarified the types of roadblocks they are encountering in trying to meet the library’s mission of helping our faculty and students succeed. The potential of VuFind is not yet the reality of VuFind and this disconnect has daily implications when we are trying to give our community the best help. The public service end of the team listened to the technology end to understand the actions they are taking to bring VuFind to the point where it can be relied upon to deliver the desired up-to-date, accurate data. We talked about how to modify access to it and the classic catalog to improve things in the short term.
• “What Can Give?” I think everyone recognizes that this has been an eventful year that has stretched all teams’ ability to deliver current and new services effectively. It’s no secret that there is a higher level of stress in all of us as we take on the increase in new challenges and opportunities. We spent most of the afternoon discussing which (if any) activities aren’t producing adequate results for the investment of time and resources. We’ve compiled a list that will be offered to the library administration to contribute to a wider discussion of fine tuning our services to optimize the impact of what we offer. We finished with a lengthy discussion of what barriers are preventing each of us from optimal productivity and brainstormed possible solutions. Again, we will compile a few proposals that we hope will be a basis for a wider discussion.

The day ended with the taking of the official 2009 RITS team portrait that we have decided to title “RITS in the Cloud” in honor of our goal to move to the cloud and because the day was so foggy nobody could see past the driveway most of the day! Thanks to Bobbie’s husband Jim for serving as the photographer.

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Kristen Morgan

Reason

Thank you Giz for helping me put my committees web site in Google!

Person Recognized

Carol Cramer

Given By

Giz Womack

Reason

While I was working the Reference Desk on a particularly busy Monday night, Carol jumped in as she passed by and helped catch the overflow by helping a faculty member on the phone with an ILL request! Thanks Carol!

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Kaeley Mcmahan

Reason

Giz stepped in to update my SMARTboard software and show me the drawing features just before an instruction session. Thanks Giz!

Person Recognized

Craig Fansler

Given By

Lauren Corbett

Reason

Thanks for attending the reception at Romance Languages to help welcome Milan Hughston, Chief of Library and Museum Archives at MOMA.

Person Recognized

Erik Mitchell

Given By

Cristina

Reason

My friend told me that Erik stopped and helped her changed her flat on Wednesday morning, 9/30. She was most grateful, since she had no idea how to work it. Thanks, Erik.

Person Recognized

Sarah Jeong

Given By

Lynn Sutton

Reason

On short notice, Sarah agreed to take Molly Keener out to lunch on her first day when Susan was stuck in Salt Lake City.

Person Recognized

Mary Beth Lock

Given By

Lynn Sutton

Reason

On short notice, Mary Beth agreed to take Molly Keener out to lunch on her first day when Susan was stuck in Salt Lake City.

Person Recognized

Craig Fansler

Given By

Molly Keener

Reason

For graciously installing blinds on my office door, completely with cheerfulness and engaging conversation!

Person Recognized

Heather Gillette

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Special thanks to Heather for coming out to assist with the 5K at the Registration table. Your expertise made the event go well, even through the rush of last minute registrants!

Person Recognized

Ellen Makaravage

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Ellen, the early morning Registrations at the 5k went smoothly. Thanks for giving up your morning, arriving early and being dedicated enough to come even though you had a busy day scheduled later!

Person Recognized

Mary Scanlon

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Mary for coming in early to work the 5K registration table. Even though I kept changing the starting time, she showed up ready to work at 6:30am. Thanks, Mary!

Person Recognized

Roz Tedford

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Roz ably handled the pre-registered and the newly registered as she captained the table. Thanks for dedicating so much of your time on Friday and Saturday (not to mention the preceding weeks)to the 5k.

Person Recognized

Patty Strickland

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Patty the registration table was able to keep up with the new and pre-registrants on Saturday morning at the 5k. She also lent us, for the second year running, all of the pens we could need! Thanks, Patty! (And thanks to your husband, Mark, too!)

Person Recognized

Kaeley Mcmahan Dedicated Deacon Winner

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Kaeley for coming to help with the registration table at the 5K. Your help made us better able to meet the needs of the last minute throng. We appreciate the help!

Person Recognized

Ellen Daugman

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Ellen for coming out early on Saturday morning to help person the registration table at the 5K. The assistance you gave allowed us to ably register all of the last minute and pre-registered racers before the 5K start time! Thanks!

Person Recognized

Sarah Jeong

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Sarah for volunteering for the 5K providing course guidance on Saturday. All of the runners were comforted by your presence and no one made a wrong turn!

Person Recognized

Steve Kelley

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Steve volunteered for the 5k and gave guidance on the course during both the 1 mile fun run and the 5k. He stood out in the questionable weather for over an hour while the walkers/runners passed him in both directions. With is able assistance, no one got lost. Thanks, Steve!

Person Recognized

Barry Davis

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Barry for providing course guidance during the 5k and 1 Mile Fun Run on Saturday. He had perhaps the hardest location on the course as he had to direct the 1 Mile people in one direction, and the 5kers in a different direction. No one got confused with his able assistance. Thanks, Barry!

Person Recognized

Roz Tedford

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Roz pulled double duty at the 5K this year. After helping with the registration table, she headed out to the course to help guide the runners on the 5K down the path to Reynolda Village, and up the path back to the library. Her enthusiasm was gratefully received by the runners in the race. Thanks, Roz.

Person Recognized

Heather Gillette

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Heather deserves special recognition for stepping up to shoot the starting gun in the 5K and then heading out to the course to provide guidance to the runners who were at their last turn on the course. Her enthusiasm and encouragement meant alot to the runners who were nearing the end of their uphill climb. Thanks, Heather!

Person Recognized

Derrik Hiatt

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Derrik and his wife Sarah ably handled the responsibilities of the water table to provide refreshment to the runners and walkers in the 5K. Thanks to Derrik, the participants were hydrated both coming and going on the 5K course. Thanks, Derrik!

Person Recognized

Tim Mitchell

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Thanks to Tim for handling the responsibilities of setting up and providing the finish line refreshments for the 5K and Fun Run runners and walkers. All of the participants appreciated your efforts!

Person Recognized

Tim Mitchell

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Tim deserves special recognition for rounding up so many food donations for the 5K. Seeking donations is very hard work and he did it with little fan fare, and a great deal of success!

Person Recognized

Carolyn Mccallum

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Thanks to Carolyn, the refreshment table at the finish line was well stocked with food. Thanks for doing all you did to gather donations for the 5K and 1 Mile Fun Run.

Person Recognized

Carolyn Mccallum

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Carolyn worked the 5K and 1 Mile Fun run providing freshly cut up fruit, water, gatorade, bagels and donuts for the participants. Thanks for coming in early and dedicating so much of your morning to make sure that the participants were well taken care of at the end of their run/walk.

Person Recognized

Mary Reeves

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Mary provided essential finish line refreshment services, as well as much good cheer throughout the morning of Saturday’s 5K. Thanks for your assistance, Mary. The participants and the rest of the volunteers appreciated your help!

Person Recognized

Doris Jones

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Doris provided assistance with the refreshment table for the 5K and 1 Mile Fun Run on Saturday. As she does every WTL, she handled the food preparation and distribution with care and professionalism. Thanks Doris!

Person Recognized

Sarah Jeong

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Thanks go to Sarah for helping at the Finish Line of the WTL5K, providing refreshments for the weary 5k runners. We appreciate the help!

Person Recognized

Susan Smith

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Susan was once again a guiding force and a force to be reckoned with in putting on the 5k and 1 Mile Fun Run this year. Her perseverance and ability to anticipate and thwart disaster served us well once again. Thanks doesn’t say enough, but Thanks, Susan!

Person Recognized

Erik Mitchell

Given By

Mbl

Reason

Thanks to Erik for providing the leadership and vision to put on another great 5K this year. Nothing slipped through the cracks even though at times things were balanced precariously. Your tenacity helped us all provide a really fine race experience to the runners and walkers again this year. Thanks, Erik!

Person Recognized

Charles Bombeld

Given By

Mbl, Erik And Susan

Reason

Thanks to Charles for providing photographic services the morning of the 5k and 1 Mile Fun Run, through rain and rainbows. The pictures are a treasure and we will remember the day fondly because of your talent!

Person Recognized

Mary Beth Lock

Given By

Susan & Erk

Reason

Mary Beth made all the difference this year in saving our sanity planning the 2nd annual WTL5K. No matter what we threw her way, she handled it capably and with good grace. In addition to the myriad of overall planning assistance, she took on volunteer coordination which was well organized. She handled manual registrations, taking money, credit cards and deacon dollars and doing data entry into the race system. Thanks for everything, MB!

Person Recognized

Scott Adair

Given By

Elise Anderson

Reason

Scott’s copy-editing of the collection analyses really improves the readability of these reports. I greatly appreciate his skill and hard work on this task.

Person Recognized

Leslie Mccall

Given By

Elise Anderson

Reason

Leslie was a key player at the Sustainability booth on Freshman Move-in Day this year. For several hours, Leslie helped distribute recycling bins and information to students and their parents. Both Jim Coffey and Dedee Johnston also offer their thanks for Leslie’s help.

Person Recognized

Heather Gillette

Given By

Susan

Reason

The race isn’t really done when the last person crosses the finish line. Thanks to Heather for helping manually enter the 97 race day registrants into our race database that we use to communicate with our racers and which will be our first line of marketing next year. It was a tedious job with hard-to-read handwriting, but Heather tackled it along with Mary Beth and got the job done!

Person Recognized

Mary Beth Lock

Given By

Susan

Reason

The race isn’t really done when the last person crosses the finish line. Thanks to Mary Beth for helping manually enter the 97 race day registrants into our race database that we use to communicate with our racers and which will be our first line of marketing next year. It was a tedious job with hard-to-read handwriting, but Mary Beth tackled it along with Heather Gillette and got the job done!

Person Recognized

Craig Fansler

Given By

Molly Keener

Reason

Craig graciously put up several posters and displays for Open Access Week that are quite colorful and eye-catching

Person Recognized

Barry Davis

Given By

Patty Strickland

Reason

Barry taught me how to use the new large book scanner in the Bridge Lab. He also showed me some tricks to get the best images for what I needed. Thank you very much Barry.

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Lauren Pressley

Reason

Giz was awesome with Jean-Paul’s and my Lib100 class on our library tour! When we stopped by the reference desk he was the epitome of the friendly and helpful librarian and even rushed to get candy when a few students mentioned wanting something sweet! I’m certain these students will return to the reference desk after such a positive introduction!

Person Recognized

Carol Cramer

Given By

Leslie Mccall

Reason

Carol created a customized Voyager report for me when I mentioned that I wanted to identify the most heavily-used parts of my collection, and the canned reports in the Bibbers 2000 database couldn’t do that. Thanks Carol!

Vufind has been live for just about 2 months now. In that time we have gotten 118 feedback emails detailing bug reports, enhancement requests, and personal opinions about the new system. It has been a busy fall for the systems staff and we are just now finishing up the fixes on a few of our big Vufind issues. One of our biggest problems has been consistent record updates. I am glad to report that we are now running daily loads into Vufind. We will shortly be introducing daily deletes as well. Full index regens still take 20 hours and we have yet to figure out exactly how frequently we need to do that. The full index regen time depends more on our record export, modification, and transfer from our Voyager system at the moment (Vufind takes about 3 hours to index the 1.6M records).

Our other major issue has been system stability. I appreciate how patient everyone has been while we iron out the issues that cause Vufind to go down so frequently. We are still working on this but hopefully have allocated enough RAM to the server and enabled the system to ‘clean-up’ after itself so that Vufind can remain responsive even during moderate load (fingers crossed - we have not had any downtime since the last modifications a week ago - many thanks to Jeremy Kindy for helping us work through this!). An interesting thing that IS found recently was that Google was responsible for 1/3 of our vufind traffic (we have now blocked their robot) :).

The Vufind community as recently created a new administrative organization and is working towards fixing many of the bugs that we have listed. When the community releases the official 1.0 release we will upgrade! In the mean time we will continue to work on our end and contribute back to the community where it is valuable. The list of enhancement requests, bugs, and fixed issues below represent all of the feedback that we have gotten so far. They are broken down into three categories, unresolved enhancement requests, unresolved bug reports, and resolved enhancement requests/bug reports.

Enhancement requests

• Would like to be able to see how many hold requests exist on an item in the new catalog
• Would like the new catalog to explicitly state which series or version an item is (example Mi-5 season 1,2,3)
• Add year into results listing
• Add journal option to basic search
• Add the ability to see 20, 40, 60 records per page
• Improve serial current issues display - right now it shows item level detail but not summary holdings
• Add ability to preserve certain facets (like library) when doing searching
• Add grouping to locations (All physical reference locations for example)
• Add the ability to click on call numbers for browsing
• Reduce the number of clicks to get to information
• Add data to the results screen including publisher information, dvd season info, pub place/date, etc
• Implement Spell Check
• Make subject headings work the same way that authors do - via listing at the top of the screen
• Make subject hierarchy work more consistently - united states history is a good example
• Add a new items feature to vufind, particularly by subject or call # range
• Would like to be able to replicate all brief record info in vufind

Bug Reports (Partially resolved or Unresolved)

• Location listing should be in alphabetical order, should be consolidated in certain cases (ref desk and reference for example) - still working on figuring this one out.
• Advanced Searching does not work with more than 2 terms, truncation proves to be problematic, further advanced searching returns inconsistent or known to be incorrect results when compared to the old catalog. One suggestion would be to remove advanced search and have advanced search link to the old catalog. There has been alot of discussion about how appropriate this. ..any thoughts? please leave comments!
• Item statuses in voyager not always reported as desired in Vufind (missing books showing up as lost), lost showing up as overdue. This is going to require some advanced item status processing in the Voyager driver and will take some time
• Date sorting not working as desired
• Recently received issues do not have a location? - We need some clarification on this
• Endnote Export not working
• “I hate vufind” - While a very real problem there is no specific bug fix for this. We may want to discuss re-introducing our “classic view” in a more prominent place to alleviate this issue
• Vufind does not always return what I search for - We have lots of reports of this. Sometimes Vufind has the record but it is not on the initial screen. In some other cases the record is not in the system. There are a few things we are working on here, first daily data loads will address recent titles. Second, we have a list of 22K records that did not import that we need to troubleshoot. Finally - we may need to think about the default search algorithm.
• Save to favorites, email functions do not have polished javascript/ajax interface, require scrolling, etc
• Name authorities are not consistent, cary grant, shakespeare return different result counts from old catalog
• ISBN searching does not work (looks like vufind is not parsing out the - during indexing and as such needs it for the search
• Improve holds/recalls

Fixed Issues

• Catalog slows down/crashes under ‘heavy’ use - Some lib100 classes of 15 people have seen some slow response times - We have worked with IS to try to resolve these issues. We have increased the amount of RAM allocated to the system, tuned SOLR settings, and searched the logs for memory leaks. Hopefully this has been resolved.
• Call Number now shows at the top of every view of the record
• Library links not always proxied appropriately - Kevin implemented a workaround for now
• Ebooks now showing as available
• Military Science added as location
• Sometimes the 007 in items (item format) does not correspond to what the item actually is. These items should be reported when identified and will be fixed by cataloging
• Known items not always showing up - We have a number of specific reports here. In some cases this is due to a lag in indexing (still working on getting the connection between our two servers opened up) but in others the items were kicked out due to record errors.
• Call number searching should not include periods - makes it difficult - resolved
• Resources without Item records in catalog show incorrect status of Checked Out - We have a workaround for this but it requires addressing each location specifically in the code. If you still see errors please send them to me
• Collections not synchronized, items in old catalog not in new - daily updating is in place, working on daily delete. It currently takes 20 hours to re-index our catalog from scratch
• Wake Forest University facet limit does not return records (It is in essence a useless facet since everything in the db has this tag) - item removed from list.

I figure since we’re about halfway through Teaching Teaching, it might be time for a Gaz update! This semester we’ve taken a different approach. Instead of Roz or me organizing the topics, lectures for each class, and activities, we’re acting as a community of learners. As a group we came up with topics that we wanted to address on the first day of the “class.” Each week several people share on the week’s topic based on their experiences and we have related group discussions based on what we hear.

So far we’ve heard about:

• Facebook, Twitter, and LibGuides as course pages
• Active Learning in One-Shot Sessions
• Incorporating Current Information Issues into Library instruction
• Sakai and POGIL
• A Pedagogical Approach to Teaching information Literacy Skills

(Attendees will be glad to see I’ve finally updated the blog!)

The topic for next Tuesday is “writing objective quiz questions and creating assignments.” So far I’m the only one who has volunteered. Does anyone else have anything they’d like to share on this day? There’s a lot of interest in creating quick and easy to grade assignments, and this is the period set aside to discuss that topic!

Since this semester has been a little bit crazy and folks haven’t always remembered the sessions they wanted to attend, I’ve added each session to the PDC. You can sign up for each “teaching strategy workshop” on our Staff Development page. This way you’ll get a reminder for the session in advance. Of course, if there’s something you’re interested in and you don’t sign up, don’t worry about it! Come on along anyway!

See you next Tuesday at 9am!

The Fun Run/Walk Participants start their journey!

After months of preparation by a group of dedicated ZSR Library faculty and staff, the 2nd Annual WTL5K/Fun Run was held yesterday morning, October 10, 2009. The final count is not yet tallied but we estimate that there were close to 270 registrations between the fun run/walk and the 5K. And since the fun run was a family affair, there were close to 300 people from the Wake Forest and greater Winston-Salem community who came out to enjoy a health-focused event on Homecoming weekend.

The weather threatened to be a challenge, but, for the most part, the rain held off and we were even treated to a rainbow prior to the start of the race. The weather was actual quite good from a runner’s point of view as a slight drizzle creates a good natural cooling system.

There were different challenges that were designed to increase participation: an Alumni Challenge for those in the 4’s and 9’s (this year’s homecoming reunion years) which was won by the 1989 graduating class, a Winston-Salem Forsyth County School system challenge to win library materials to the school with the most registrations which was taken by Southwest Elementary, and a repeat of last year’s Greek Challenge for WFU students to win intramural sports points for their series (winners: Sigma Chi and Kappa Delt). The most successful was the school challenge and it was great to see plenty of local young students participate in both events.

For the first time, we offered a grand prize to the top male and female finisher in the 5K race. The prizes, Ideapads, were donated by Lenovo. The overall male winner was our own Leek Deng for the second straight year. The female winner was Nicole Weiler.

Without a doubt, the WTL5K could not have succeeded without all the great teamwork from everyone in the library. It was really a case of “taking a village” to put on this event. The core “WTL5K” steering committee that coordinated all the many details was comprised of Erik Mitchell, Susan Smith, Mary Beth Lock (race directors), Roz Tedford (for the Marketing Committee) and Carolyn McCallum (for the WTL Planning Committee). Wanda Brown headed the fund raising efforts. Carolyn and Tim Mitchell managed securing food for the participants from local stores. Carolyn took charge of getting really wonderful t-shirts. Roz found new ways to get the word out, including a facebook ad. Mary Beth coordinated a crackerjack team of race day volunteers. In addition to our fabulous student assistants who came out to help on an early Saturday morning, thanks go to; Heather Gillette, Ellen Makaravage, Mary Scanlon, Ellen Daugman, Patty Strickland, Kaeley McMahan, Roz (Registration); Sarah Jeong, Steve Kelley, Barry Davis, Roz Tedford (Race Course Guidance); Derrick Hiatt (Water Stop); Tim Mitchell, Carolyn McCallum, Mary Reeves, Doris Jones (Finish Line Food); Carol Cramer and many others (after race clean up); Kevin Gilbertson (race website and marketing graphics); Craig Fansler (Award Certificates and other marketing materials); Kristen Morgan (Financial tracking); Charles Bombeld, Ron Smith, John Borwick (photography); Mark Strickland, Richard Lock (and Lock kids), Mark McCallum, Rachel Hiatt, John Borwick, Ron Smith (Giving up their Saturday to help their spouse’s cause). And last, but certainly not least, thanks go to our fearless Dean, Lynn Sutton, who patiently let the race directors (Susan, Erik and Mary Beth) blow off steam throughout the planning process without judging (we hope!) and who continues to promote and support innovative ways for ZSR Library to make its mark on the Wake Forest community.

We have started to post pictures that document the day’s events:

General Event Photos Including the Fun Run

WTL5K Contestant “On Course” Photos (search by bib number)

Photos by John Borwick

Photos by Thomas Fischer (Race photos start on page 6, #64 and go to page 21)

The long months of planning and scheduling is all done tomorrow but right now things are getting busy!

Many thanks to Carolyn and Tim who spearheaded the T-shirt brigade - they look great! Pre-registration pick-up begins at 2pm in the all night study room. There is still plenty of time to come pay your $$ to race!