Library Gazette

Sha Li Zhong, the Associate Dean for Collections & Technical Services at UNCG came with two librarians from China that are currently participating in their Visiting Scholars program on Thursday, Oct. 1. While Sha Li was meeting with Wanda, I was asked to show the Chinese librarians around. It was quite exciting for me, since I never met a librarian from China before.

They have only been in the States for a week, so they were extremely happy to be able to converse with me in Chinese. I started the tour from the ground floor - Starbucks. They were impressed with the coffee shop and started taking pictures. The manager came out right away and explained that it is against company policy to take pictures of their menu and their food. That was news to us. She explained that people steal their menu and recipes all the time, so they have to be careful.

Next to the all night study rooms, we toured the Rare Books department, Reference department, Circulation, Media Lab, stacks, more study rooms, and the atrium. The Rare Books Reading Room really blew them away; they were taken by the grandeur of the room. They liked the way we make use of the atrium. They told me that they have an atrium in their library too, but just a few chairs. The small group study rooms were a hit with them. Through the whole time, they were taking pictures and making comments about how they could transform their library with what they learned in ZSR.

I also showed them the library homepage. They were impressed by the pictures of new books and films. They also liked the Texting/Emailing/Citing/Putting Hold and Recall options for titles in the online catalog.

The walk to the Quad was nice. They thought our campus is beautiful and they wanted to take some souvenir home. However, after some long consideration, they gave up, because they are all made in China!

One of the best part of working with librarians from other institutions is we can exchange information and learn about each other’s practices - how they do overdues and ILL, etc. It was very interesting to find out that the professional librarians there get THREE months off! Two in the summer and one in the winter, when the school is not in session. “Who runs the library?” I asked. They informed me since there are so many of them - sixty, they each work five days in the summer to cover the operation. Now, that’s a good life! As if this was not enough to shock me, they told me that each librarian gets “heat compensation money” in the summer if they come in to work - about $25 each month. Not much, they said. I asked if the building is not air conditioned. They said that it is and the money is to cover their “stress” having to endure the heat while commuting to and from work. Having experienced the awful combination of heat and high humidity of subtropical climate, I can sympathize with that.

All and all, I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with them. I believed they saw it as very beneficial and interesting, as did I.

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!

It’s arts and crafts time!! Following the boisterous and jolly Holiday Luncheon at Graylyn, staff members gathered in Wilson 476 to make holiday wreaths using book jackets collected throughout the year. Following in true “Kindergarten arts and crafts style” we had pre-cut leaves, bows, ribbons, and holly berries. If feeling particularly gifted, we also supplied templates and fresh jackets for staff to cut out there own unique pieces.

The Staff Development Committee would like to extend a huge Thank You to Charles Bombeld for saving book jackets this past year and all those who attended! If you’d like to see photos of this event, check out the Flickr photo set.

Happy Holidays!

Heather

Setting up those Christmas/Holiday decorations

Singing those Christmas/Holiday songs

Buying all those special gifts

Re-gifting those fruit cakes

And best of all, just like Santa comes to all the malls, Wake the Library comes to ZSR.

Every year around this time, ZSR staff pulls together in efforts to help the students through their final week of exams. We may not be able to take an exam or write a paper for them, but we do our best to make studying and research as pleasurable as possible. We provide around-the-clock coffee and serve snacks at midnight every night (or is it morning?).This year, Wake the Library Committee members worked with Aramark to supply Subway sandwiches, Chick-fil-A, and Pizza over the six nights. Coffee moved slower this year due to the new Starbucks in the library. However, Starbucks adjusted their hours staying open longer for the students.

The Graffiti Board is back in full force–with paint, not markers this year. We also provided a few dozen of the “Oversize Collection” wooden dummy blocks to use as portable graffiti boards.

On behalf of the Staff Association Committee, THANK YOU LIBRARY STAFF for your generous donations to this year’s Turkeypalooza, hosted by Campus Kitchen. Campus Kitchen provides meals to local food shelters and community centers in Winston-Salem and hosts Turkeypalooza each November, which prepares roughly 15,000 Thanksgiving meals. This year, the ZSR Library provided 5 gallons of orange juice and over $30 in cash donations. In case you were wondering, the orange juice is used to prepare the Sweet Potato Casseroles.

Thank you again for your generous donations during this Holiday Season. If you would like more information, please visit the Campus Kitchen website.

Yesterday for our LIB210: Social Science Research Sources and Strategies class, Bobbie, Carolyn and I planned a variation on the library tour. We divided our students up into three groups and sent them to different areas of the library. They had three questions to ask:

• What resources or services would a WFU student find here?
• What resources or services do you provide to help with research?
• What is one thing about your department that you think students should know but don’t?

They also took along cameras Carolyn had checked out from the ITC and they took pictures of the departments.

When they returned to class each group told the other students about the departments they had visited. While they talked I uploaded the pictures into a Flickr page. Then this week they will be going in to name the pictures, put in a description and tag them. This will then lead us nicely into our discussions next week about search terms, controlled vocabularies and the benefit of using the subject terms within our electronic products.

We were thrilled with how much the students enjoyed the exercise. They were all excited about going out and learning new things and we heard a lot of “I never new that” and “that’s cool!” from the class as different areas or services were discussed. It worked so well I’m going to do it for my LIB100 class in October.

Many, many thanks to those on our staff who met our students and discussed our services with them. Mary Beth, Mary Reeves, Erik, Kaeley, Mary Lib, Sharon and Vicki. The students all commented on how nice the folks they had met were and how eager they were to help students.

If you want to see the pictures, here’s the site and toward the end of the set some pictures have been named and tagged already. I’m sure they would love to have some comments!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zsrlib210/

On Sunday, July 13th, Roz led the 30 new freshmen student athletes through a twenty minute introduction to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. These students came to the library in three groups, one group every twenty minutes, over the course of an hour. We placed them in the ITC desktop computer lab and had the students spend five minutes searching for answer to three questions about a particular Olympic sport. After five minutes, Roz asked them what they found and how they found it. It didn’t take long for them to realize their trusted Google search didn’t always deliver the best results! This gave us the opportunity to show them how to contact a librarian for research assistance. After answering a few more questions about the library, we signed off on their “Deacon Discovery” worksheets (think “scavenger hunt”) and sent them on to their next destination. Hopefully this fast, fun introduction to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library will encourage these students to come back when papers are due! (We’ve already seen a few with a 10 page Anthropology paper due in summer school.) These students were great, and Roz and I had a wonderful time introducing them to ZSR!

After a year’s hiatus (to allow other teams a chance to win), the ZSR Zephyrs have returned the the WFU Staff Summer Olympics this season!

This year’s roster is comprised of Heather Gillette, Prentice Armstrong (team veteran), Roz Tedford, Erik Mitchell (team veteran), Mary Beth Lock, Carolyn McCallum and Susan Smith (team veteran).

There will be 8 weekly competitive events, ranging from today’s Bocce Ball toss to Inner Tube Water Polo. Points are earned by winning, placing or just participating in these events, in addition to earning daily points for exercise and class participation.

We would love to have any interested ZSR’ers come out on Wednesdays and cheer us on!

Yesterday I gave a talk on Blended Learning through the ITC. The formal description of the program was “Many students experience a disconnect between their experience in the classroom and their personal interactions on the web. One way to address this is the integration of tools that students already use with regularity. This presentation will explain how to do this with an introduction to blended learning, and it will cover how blended learning techniques can be used to strengthen the academic experience. Blended learning techniques can lead to a more engaged and communicative class and help prepare students for the changing work force.” The presentation was based on the following, though a bit toned down for our audience:

I attempted to introduce some generational trends, discuss a little bit of learning theory, and talk about some solutions that we can implement. I also tried to sell the library’s blog and wiki program, myself as someone who can help faculty figure out what makes the most sense for their class, and the library as a resource for technology training.

The content appeared to be newer for the group than I expected, but I did get a few requests for follow up meetings, so I’m excited about that!

A few people said they would like to come but weren’t able to make it. Giz and I are planning to offer the session again in late summer and in the fall if you’d like to try to make it!