Library Gazette

Last spring, as I was preparing for my presentation at the American Library Association Annual Conference, I had an idea about library outreach to International Students.Roz supported my idea, and Carol introduced me to Sam Edwards, International Studies Adviser at the Wake Forest University Center for International Studies.On August 21^st, Giz and I gave a presentation on library resources at the Graduate Students Orientation for International Students. We talked about the various services that ZSR Library offers for graduate students, including the Electronic Theses and Dissertations workshops in addition to the Endnote and Zotero workshops. The students asked many questions, and we encouraged them to come to the Graduate Student Lounge in ZSR Library. We look forward to working with them in the future.

Give Hugh his due. Once again, artisan/craftsman Hugh Brown has done work that demonstrates thinking outside the box.

Special Collections is removing everything from the Rare workroom. This move meant demolishing a perfectly good shelving unit because it was too large to get out of the space. Hugh Brown to the rescue. He executed a deft move and sawed the unit in half-carried it down to Preservation on a dolly, and re-assembled it. There is now a very large unit with a laminate work surface and multiple shelves for storing flat materials in Preservation. This will allow me to store materials that I’ve keep for years on the floor and store them in a clean, easy to reach location. Thank you Hugh!

Person Recognized

Craig Fansler

Given By

Mary Beth

Reason

Craig made the best displays I've ever seen for "welcome back" days!

Person Recognized

Charles "the Man" Bombeld

Given By

Scott

Reason

Charles voluntarily helped us collections and liasion folks weed, box & transport 20 boxes of books from Mil Sci today. He's not afraid to break a sweat for the greater good!

Person Recognized

Heather Gillette

Given By

Mary Beth

Reason

For coming up with the research and fleshing out the ideas for the great "Power of Z" and "Moon Launch" displays. Thanks Heather!

Person Recognized

Heather

Given By

Mb

Reason

For going the extra mile and getting our student schedules up into a Google Docs (and putting it in the wiki, too.) This certainly increases functionality!

Person Recognized

Lynn

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Cristina

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Wanda

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Mary Reeves

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Travis

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Craig

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Erik

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Tim

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Mary Beth

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Jean-paul

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Charles

Given By

Scott

Reason

For helping move a massive shipment of gift books into the building.

Person Recognized

Scott Adair

Given By

Lauren Corbett

Reason

Scott juggled managing the arrival of 153 boxes of books (not on pallets!) and a meeting with the German & Russian dept. faculty rep about beginning an approval plan at the same time. Thanks Scott!

Person Recognized

Leslie Mccall

Given By

Erik

Reason

Leslie has not only been on top of the data issues related to our MARC records and Vufind, when we chatted about needing to enable validation for cataloging she added this complex task on top of her ongoing duties and did a great job!

Person Recognized

Roz Tedford

Given By

Craig

Reason

Roz met with me several times over the summer to help me get up and running with my LIB100 course. She was always there when I had a question and really helped me feel comfortable with the process. Thanks Roz!

Person Recognized

Lauren Pressley

Given By

Craig

Reason

I met with Lauren several times over the summer to get her input on teaching LIB100 and to bounce ideas off her. Lauren was always open to helping me and very positive and encouraging. That helped a lot! Thanks Lauren!

Person Recognized

Linda Early

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Linda took the "Early" shift at the Benson table last Thursday and let us use her student worker to help with the party.

Person Recognized

Chris Burris

Given By

Kristen Morgan

Reason

Thank you Chris for helping Dr. Wilson out the other day with such short notice and with no questions asked!

Person Recognized

Prentice Armstrong

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Prentice helped staff the Benson table and also helped set up the booth on a moment's notice after the scheduled person had to drop out to help a patron.

Person Recognized

Cristina Yu

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson and for lending us your drink-dispensing cooler for the party.

Person Recognized

Kevin Gilbertson

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson and for coordinating our greeters during the party.

Person Recognized

Ellen Daugman

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Doris Jones

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Carolyn Mccallum

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Mary Reeves

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Chris Burris

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson and for volunteering on-the-spot to help tear down the booth at the end.

Person Recognized

Sarah Jeong

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Peter Romanov

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson and for finding 5 students to help with the party and one to help staff the Benson booth during the staff meeting.

Person Recognized

Lauren Corbett

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson.

Person Recognized

Ellen Makaravage

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping us staff the table in Benson and for a lot of all-around help before, during and after the student party.

Person Recognized

Roz Tedford Dedicated Deacon Winner

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for coordinating the drinks and a zillion other details for the party, as well as providing some of the handouts for the Benson table.

Person Recognized

Wanda Brown

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for acting as emcee during the student party, as well as negotiating the best rate for our food.

Person Recognized

Barry Davis

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for setting up and managing the Wii stations during the new student party.

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for doing the PowerPoint, helping with the Wii stations, setting up the Benson table, buying the lollipops, and tons of other other things too numerable to mention for the Benson table and the new student party.

Person Recognized

Patty Strickland

Given By

Judy S.

Reason

For her tremendous help with the morning mail (especially mondays) and her willingness to pitch in and help with any given project that may come along.

Person Recognized

Vicki Johnson

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for helping with setup, door prizes, and ushering at the new student party.

Person Recognized

Susan Smith

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for taking pictures at the new student party.

Person Recognized

Erik Mitchell

Given By

Carol Cramer

Reason

Thanks for making lots of extra 5K brochures at the last minute for the Benson table.

Person Recognized

Barry Davis

Given By

Lauren Corbett

Reason

Many thanks to Barry for quickly making up DVDs with the student orientation videos of Lynn and Wanda! Some of the older Thinkpads weren't playing the videos embedded in the Blackboard course.

Person Recognized

Heather Gillette

Given By

Giz Womack

Reason

Heather came and spoke to my Blackboard class on a moment's notice in order to explain e-reserves to the new faculty attending the class! I really appreciated her willingness to jump right in!

Person Recognized

Travis Manning

Given By

Heather Gillette

Reason

Many many many thanks to Travis for helping train some of my students during the first week of class. His willingness to jump in and lend a hand is deeply appreciated!!

Person Recognized

Derrik Hiatt

Given By

Linda Early

Reason

Derrik took a Spanish email from a vendor and translated it for me and then helped me with the response in Spanish when they sent me information that they could take my Mastercard in payment… Thank you SO MUCH!!

Person Recognized

Tim Mitchell

Given By

Lynn Sutton

Reason

Tim saved my professional life by quickly setting up a loaner laptop when I needed one on a Friday morning. Such quick and cheerful service!

Person Recognized

Patty Strickland

Given By

Lauren Corbett

Reason

Thanks for vacuuming all of Resource Services this morning — removing years of dust and gravel in the carpet!

Person Recognized

Mary Beth Lock

Given By

Susan

Reason

Mary Beth stopped all her planned work for the day to pull together marketing materials for the WSFCS for our race. I was tied up, Roz was off, and it needed to be prepared for Monday distribution! Thanks, MB!

Person Recognized

Mary Scanlon

Given By

Susan Smith

Reason

Mary stopped her busy day to walk over to Gov. Docs with me to find a 1979 microfiche senate report for a patron. It was quite a scavenger hunt, and I wouldn't have been successful without her help!

Person Recognized

Giz Womack

Given By

Susan Smith

Reason

Giz stopped his busy day to walk over to Gov. Docs with me to find a 1979 microfiche senate report for a patron. It was quite a scavenger hunt, and I wouldn't have been successful without his help!

Person Recognized

Jean-paul

Given By

Lauren P.

Reason

Thanks for teaching the Outlook class for the staff development committee!

I attended the Wednesday, Sept 23rd Campus Climate Survey Meeting in Pugh and since several colleagues could not attend I thought I’d take some notes and post them here!

About 30-35 people attended the session. The review of the instrument described how various work climate elements to provide an overall assessment. As those of us who took the survey will recall, it was based on a 5 point likert scale and had three open items for qualitative data. 1397 surveys were distributed online and in print and 868 were completed. This gave us a better than average (based on the benchmarks) 62 percent completion rate! To ensure annonimity there were options to hide user information such as department or gender. The plan is to do such surveys every two to three years. The organization conducting the survey also does a larger national survey every three years to gather their benchmark data.

The work climate elements in our survey were:

• Affiliation
• Work content
• Career
• Benefits
• Compensation

Together these elements equal the “Work Climate” We had a mean score of 3.54 with a standard deviation of 0.55. We had a 60 percent overall favorabilty, which means 60% of responders averaged a 4 or 5 on their responses.

The full Powerpoint report with data and tables will be on WIN on Thursday, September 24th!

Some of the most positive comments focuses on:

• Fun, challenging work
• PTO, Tuition concession
• Ability to make a difference / to have impact
• Job security and PDC resources
• Beautiful campus
• Less corporate environment

The Google Books settlement stemmed from lawsuits related to the Google Books digitization project. The original settlement from October 2008 has seen alot of opinion and criticism in the last year. Below is a short list of sites that cover the developments:

1. Google Books Settlement page
2. ZSR Library blog entries discussing the settlement
3. Timeline of developments on Cnet
4. The EU perspective on Google Books
5. NyTimes coverage
6. Editorial by Sergey Brin

In teaching teaching we will discuss some possible uses of Google Books as a teaching topic in Information Literacy courses. Some ideas for using this topic to guide class include:

1. Doing research on current events
2. Evaluating ‘news’ type resources on websites (for example comparing Cnet and Reuters coverage)
3. Discussion of Copyright issues surrounding digitization

This month’s Emerging Tech Talk was on Location Aware Devices and Augmented Reality. Since it still sounds a lot like science fiction, and is hard to explain without seeing it in action, we started by watching a few videos:

First, a video about overlaying additional information based on symbols a device understands:

Then, a video about a browser that overlays data with the environment behind it:

Then, a video about Yelp’s “Monocle” Easter Egg for the iPhone:

And finally, we watched Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense TED Talk.

Afterward, we discussed how location aware devices are becoming more mainstream as GPS technology and compasses show up in mobile devices, and how we’re about to see growth in augmented reality as well (especially after the next version of the iPhone OS). The Sixth Sense demo showed a possible next steps we could see after that. Exciting stuff! And once it’s much more mainstream these technologies will impact how people can access information and what their expectations will be.

If you’re interested in seeing the Monocle app in action, several of us have installed it on our phones. I’d be happy to show you!

On Wednesday, September 9th, and Thursday September 10th, Barry Davis and I led Google Sites workshops for two sections of Dr. Marsh’s Biomechanics class. Each Fall these two Biomechanics classes are broken into groups that must conduct research and post their hypothesis, methods, results and more on the web. In the past this was an arduous project that required the students to not only master digital video, but also master Adobe Dreamweaver and the basics of good web design!

Now, thanks to Google Sites, which gives users 100MB of web space and an easy to use web interface for web design, the students taking Dr. Marsh’s Biomechanics class this Fall will have the opportunity to create their project as a Google Site rather than using Adobe Dreamweaver. The final hurdle to moving from Dreamweaver to Google Sites was crossed when Barry found a solution for posting Quicktime video using Google Gadgets!

Using Google Sites will allow these students to collaborate on the site, giving everyone the ability to post content. Additionally, students will be able to keep these sites active even after they graduate! Hopefully, the ease of Google Sites will also let them focus on the Biomechanics elements of the project rather than the web design! While some student organizations are now using Google Sites to make their pages easy to update, this project is the first academic use I’ve seen of Google Sites at WFU, but I’m sure it won’t be the last as we see more Google tools used in the classroom, and not just in Lib100!

It has been just over 2 weeks since we pulled the trigger and switched our catalog view over. We have gotten lots of great feedback and ideas for improvement and I thought I would take a moment to gather this feedback together and talk about next steps.

General Impressions

Comments from our patrons have varied from being impressed with the faceted browsing options to being frustrated with the limited information displayed on the default record page. Perhaps not surprisingly, There were some uses of the old catalog that do not work the same in Vufind (for example the display of the number of holds on a record). There has been some expectation that Vufind would go further in being more ‘Amazon’ like in how it indexes and displays records.

The list of enhancement requests, bugs, and fixed issues below represent all of the feedback that we have gotten over the last few weeks. We are working to resolve the bugs (foremost among them the speed issues and advanced searching) and will keep you posted with new news.

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)

Bug Reports (Unresolved)

• Catalog slows down under ‘heavy’ use - Some lib100 classes of 15 people have seen some slow response times
• Location listing should be in alphabetical order, should be consolidated in certain cases (ref desk and reference for example)
• 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
• 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, further statuses in voyager not always reported as desired in Vufind (missing books showing up as lost), lost showing up as overdue
• Date sorting not working as desired
• Recently received issues do not have a location?
• Wake Forest University facet limit does not return records (It is in essence a useless facet since everything in the db has this tag)
• Call number searching should not include periods - makes it difficult
• Endnote Export not working
• Still working on fully automated index updating

Fixed Issues

• 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.

Heather Works on Trusses at the WFU Habitat House

As part of the Wake Forest University/Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center Habitat Build, ZSR Library sent a crew of 10 to work on the site on Wed. September 9. Volunteers from all 4 library teams were represented and worked together so well that the Habitat crew chief voiced how impressed he was with the quality and quantity of work that was accomplished in our 4 hour shift.

At 7:45 am this morning we gathered to get instructions and direction for the day. Reporting for duty were: Prentice Armstrong, Heather Gillette, Erik Mitchell, Tim Mitchell, Jean-Paul Bessou, Kevin Gilbertson, Craig Fansler, Barry Davis, Susan Smith, and ZSR volunteer Ron Smith. Our assignments included dismantling/moving/assembling scaffolding, bracing trusses from the interior, adding more trusses on the front of the house, installing sheathing on the upper end of the house, stapling up vapor barriers, installing two wing rafters, and then securing them to roof sheathing.

I think I speak for the group when I say that it was a very rewarding experience and that, as a volunteer opportunity, it rated with the best. Our crew supervisor Tony, and his assistant, Courtney, were excellent instructors and patiently taught us what we needed to know to do a very competent job.

Take a look at the pictures from this morning to see all that was accomplished!

The NYT has a interesting update on the status of the GoogleBooks legal issues this morning. There are some curious tidbits in the article including a mention of a “book rights registry” that Google asserts will coordinate rights payments to publishers.

Of note, the article also mentions the Europeana Digital Library, a multi-institutional repository of all sorts of digital materials.