Library Gazette

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.

Lauren Corbett first responded to a request for help from Trinity Center’s Director, Ann Dixon-Coppage. Prior to moving to the current location, Trinity Center’s books had been loosely organized, but after the move, workers were having trouble locating titles they knew were in the collection. Lauren realized that LibraryThing would help the workers at the center utilize its extensive book collection better since it is searchable and tags could be used to identify three different rooms containing the books.

Lauren embarked on project alone initially, but once she mentioned it to co-workers over lunch, Carolyn McCallum and Patty Strickland both immediately volunteered to help. Project stats to date: 28 hours and 596 titles. We estimate we may be about halfway through entering the collection into LibraryThing. As a result of recent internal publicity about this community service project, we have a new volunteer: Ellen Makaravage.

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.

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!

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

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!

Yesterday afternoon, Giz and I presented “Technology Tools for the Classroom” to an off-site faculty retreat of the Schools of Business. You may recall that the Calloway and Babcock schools have merged under a single dean; the combined faculty met at the Brookstown Inn for the day to kick off the new academic year. Michelle Roehm, Sr. Assoc. Dean of Faculty, invited Giz and me to present some new tools; after consulting with her we agreed to present Twitter, Google tools and LibGuides.

A quick poll revealed that faculty members aren’t using Twitter. Giz and I briefly described the micro-blogging site while showing it on two screens. We explained that it serves as a personalized news feed, a marketing channel and a social network. We demonstrated a Twitter feed we had created two weeks ago that assembled Tweets from such sources as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes and Business Week. The feed also pulled Tweets from a handful of business schools and nationally known consultants. We showed how links in the Tweets will take the reader to the original article and shared that Twitter is the first place that breaking news can be found.

Twitter is used as a marketing channel by companies to announce promotions and new products, communicate with customers and in some cases, solve customer problems. Some companies use Twitter to solicit customer comments while designing or improving products. Others use the customer interaction on Twitter to build customer loyalty. Giz suggested that the Schools of Business could use Twitter for keeping in touch with alumni, especially the 20-somethings who have moved on from Facebook.

The social networking aspect of Twitter wasn’t our focus, but we told the group about Twibes and how this can connect a reader with other Twitterers interested in a topic. We did show them how to find feeds using Google or Twitter’s find people tool. We also demonstrated how to follow issues using hash tags; our examples were #Fed for the Federal Reserve Bank and #economy for the economy.

Google has many wonderful tools and Giz loves them all. With much enthusiasm, we showed the faculty how to use Google docs for collaborating on projects; that could include faculty collaborating on research or their students’ working on group projects. The power of Google docs quickly became apparent to the group, which expressed enthusiasm for it and generated lots of questions. After Giz had shown them the benefits of docs, he went on to tell them about Google sites, a tool that helps one construct a web site very easily. Google will also host that website up to 100 mg of memory for free. He also described how Google Wave is going to combine email, chat and documents into a single, powerful, free tool. His repeated reminders that all these Google tools are free earned him the nickname “The Prophet” before the session was finished.

After finishing with Google, we demonstrated LibGuides to the group. We showed that there is a long list of guides available; some are course-specific while others cover general topics. An example of the former is for ACC111, into which I’ve placed links to all the resources a student would need to successfully complete the final project for the class. The guide includes instructions on how to use the individual databases and features video and screen shots. The example we showed of the latter is Company and Industry Information, a topical guide serving numerous classes.

The group paid rapt attention and several faculty sought us out after the session to discuss how we might help them apply these technologies in their classes. We appreciated the opportunity to interact with the faculty and enjoyed our time with them.

As we all know, the ZSR Library acquired faculty status for its librarians as of July 1, 2009. Thus, as the first librarian hired after July 1, 2009, I was given the opportunity to participate in the Wake Forest University’s 2009 new faculty orientation. I am truly grateful and honored for being one the attendees at such a well planned and instructive orientation that lasted three days.

August 1, 2009 was the first day and the schedule was impressive. A continental breakfast was offered at the Teaching and Learning Center at the ZSR Library where new faculties had the opportunity to get acquainted and socialize. This was followed by a warm welcome from the Provost Jill Tiefenthaler who shook hands and exchanged few words with each new faculty. This strategy was so well thought of as it gave each new faculty the opportunity to be acknowledged individually by the provost. Jill graciously let us know that one of her priorities was professional development and therefore encouraged us to devote some time for scholarship without forgetting our first responsibility which is to set the bar high for teaching. The introduction of the Provost was followed by welcoming words from the different Associate Provosts who shared with us their experience working at Wake Forest. They were all pleased to be a part of the Wake Forest University community. It was quite encouraging to see that most of these folks have been here for many years.

After a quick break, the group was given a tour of Winston-Salem where a knowledgeable tour guide introduced Winston-Salem and took us to its historical background and cultural places including shops and restaurants downtown. Although I moved to Winston-Salem a couple of weeks prior to the orientation and had some time to look around, this tour made me discover new exciting places like Old Salem where I will definitely go back for a visit with my family.

The tour of Winston-Salem ended with a lunch at the Reynolda House where an introduction to this historical house was given by the Director Allison Perkins. This was followed by few presentations instructing us on the Reynolda House’s art resources. The group was then given a tour of the Reynolda House and we were all impressed by the historical richness of this house. The first day of the orientation ended with a ride back to the ZSR Library.

The second day of the new faculty orientation was August 14, 2009 at the Graylyn Conference Center - and - provided new faculties with significant information geared toward facilitating their integration into the Wake Forest University community. The schedule was impressive and covered the whole day. After a warm welcome from the Associate Dean of the College, Paul Ribisl, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Jacquelyn S. Fetrow, gave her opening comments. The message was clear and to the point with a walk through the Office of the Dean’s Website. She commented on her office’s organizational chart and emphasized on where to go for help. She also announced the ITGs and commented on their respective roles in the college. Additionally, the Dean of the college introduced the Student Athlete Services and the Learning Assistance Office and Program.

After the introduction of the Associate Deans and Support Staff, three Teacher Scholars gave a presentation on the Teacher Scholar Ideal at Wake Forest. The panel included J. K. Curry, from the Department of Theater and Dance, Christian Miller from the Department of Philosophy, and Akbar Salam from the Department of Chemistry. They all spoke the same language and gave us advice on how to effectively teach and communicate with students. One advice was to put together a syllabus that we would hand out to students the very first day of class in order for them to be aware of due dates for assignments and exams.

During our time at Graylyn, the new faculty group was also informed on the available opportunities for scholarship and creative activities. These opportunities include: guaranteed junior faculty leaves which provides junior faculties in tenure track with the opportunity to take one term off to complete a research or scholarly work, Reynolds sabbatical leaves which can be taken for one semester at full pay or a whole year at reduced pay, Archie Fund for the Arts and Humanities, and Wake Forest Scholars. This last activity led to a lunch break.

This lunch was so memorable that it certainly worth a whole paragraph. There were several chefs and servers to wait on new faculties. The menu was impressive and the food, absolutely tasty and abundant. We felt like royalty at that lunch and we all found it worth it to be there. The lunch was followed by more informative presentations.

Three faculty members shared their experiences on how to manage family and work at Wake Forest. The panel was comprised of Ann Cunningham from the Department of Education, Mary Dalton from the Department of Communication, and Dean Franco from the Department of English. Although the message was more for faculties with children, faculties with no dependents would use the information when they decide to have kids. This section led to a round table discussion of “The First Year”.

Three faculty members who have been at Wake Forest for one year talked about the varied challenges that new faculties experience within the first year on the service. This panel included Patricia Dos Santos from the Department of Chemistry, Sandya Hewamane from the Department of Anthropology, and Melissa Jenkins from the Department of English. This round table discussion gave us the opportunity to ask questions and share mutual ideas. Since several new faculties mentioned to me in private conversations prior to the round table discussion that the only thing missing in the orientation was a tour of the ZSR Library, I thought I should share these wishes with the orientation organizers, which I did.The round table was followed by a wine and cheese reception where I was approached by several new faculties including the Associate Dean of the College, Paul Ribisl, just to say thanks for bringing up the library tour wishes.

The third and last day of the new faculty orientation was Tuesday August 18, 2009. This last day was also well organized. After a nice breakfast, the new faculties were welcomed and introduced to the Human Resources by Angela Culler, Director of HR Operations. Following the HR introduction, Chief of Police, Regina Lawson gave a presentation on campus safety and talked about precaution measures that faculty members should take to protect themselves and their students. One of the most important discussions of the day included a presentation on benefits.

Benefit specialist, Coburn Dagenhart gave an informative presentation on “Understanding Your Benefits”. This was followed by a Q and A section on benefits with benefits staff. This benefits discussion section gave new faculties, including myself, the occasion to ask questions and make changes to benefit forms. The benefit section led to lunch and later to ThinkPad distribution.

The ThinkPad distribution was coordinated by Pat Idol from Information Systems. Here, new faculties were introduced to their new computers follow by a tutorial section where they were taught how to use their new laptops. Since I already had my laptop, I left the orientation and came back to work.

It was such a great opportunity for me to participate in this new faculty orientation as I left with tons of useful information that will help ease my transition into my new work environment. The first day was impressive and gave me the opportunity to discover Winston-Salem and to socialize with other new faculties. The second day was insightful and informative as it allowed me to learn what some of the challenges ahead of me are and how to effectively overcome them. The third and final day was also informative as it gave me the opportunity to better understand benefits and who to contact for campus safety and emergencies. I am glad the library acquired faculty status for its librarians as this expands the limits of their involvement in the Wake Forest University’s academic activities.