library+instruction+technology

I've enjoyed reading the various Library Day in the Life posts this week. I thought I would add my two cents, but in different format. Instead of a single day, here is an overview of my entire week. I will probably attempt the actual day in the life post once the semester gets into swing. That's when my life is most interesting. Summers are a hodgepodge of boring back office stuff.

Monday

• Updated information about new MLA and APA styles on web site
• Installed new barcode wand on first circulation computer and replaced the broken cord on the barcode wand on the second circulation computer
• Met with Physical Plant Director about roof leak
• Began to write staff performance appraisals
• Notified everyone working in the building of the problem with the A/C chiller and Physical Plant's timeframe for the fix
• Wrote narrative describing library resources supporting the athletic training curriculum as part of a self-study team for program re-accreditation

Tuesday

• Updated content on athletic training subject guide on web site
• Posted draft minutes of RUSA Reference Services Section's Web Advisory Committee to ALA Connect and emailed to appropriate RSS folks
• Sent email welcoming new member who has agreed to join RUSA MARS Local Systems & Services
• Posted draft minutes of Local Systems & Services Committee to ALA Connect and emailed to new member not yet in the system
• Created a planning document in ALA Connect for our discussion forum on the local customization and evaluation of discovery services to be held at Midwinter in Boston
• Ran a wide variety of reports on circulation statistics of unbound and bound journals
• Met with Director of Academic Resource Center to learn about the positive changes being made to the football study tables that are held in the library during fall semester
• Re-iterated my philosophy that "fear of theft" is not a criterion for collection development

Wednesday

• Signed authorizations for bill payment and entered amounts into my budget tracking spreadsheet.
• Continued to write performance appraisals
• Met with faculty member coordinating the last class in our Arts & Humanities sequence to refine library instruction objectives from last semester
• Reviewed the final details of the DVD relocation and reclassification (from Dewey to LC) project
• Reviewed existing processing workflow of serials and the long standing circulation policy of serials (Circ stats are low, time investment in front/backend processing is high, rationale for circulating is no longer valid in my opinion..again fear of theft and cutting.)
• Met with Computer Services staff to learn what network services will still be available to the second year (were DC now are Northwest State) students in our 1+2+1 nursing program with Northwest State Community College 

Thursday

• Met with circulation supervisor and A/V coordinator to plan for student worker needs for coming academic year and talk about potential for cross-training students to work circulation and A/V tech support
• Reviewed existing loan rules, loan rule limiter table, and what authorizations our students have in Millennium with circulation supervisor in order to submit a request to OPAL Help to enact the policy change to no longer circulate serials
• Met with faculty member coordinating Master of Arts in Education graduate program to finalize process for loading theses into the OhioLINK Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Center
• Created authorization form and letter to be sent to targeted past graduates to obtain permission to digitize their theses to load into the ETD Center
• Emailed and then talked on the phone with the Assistant Dean for Adult and Graduate Programs to initiate process with OhioLINK for Defiance College to join the ETD Center

Friday

• Reviewed our current statistics of missing items and discussed the "search for missing item process" with circulation supervisor
• Walked the stacks for 15 minutes and found six of the missing books (go me!)
• Learned via email that I chose wisely during database funding reconstruction. The Library will be paying a larger percentage than in the past, but our students and faculty will still have access to specific discipline databases. 
• Exchanged emails with OhioLINK about our request to join the ETD Center
• Met with circulation supervisor about student worker evaluation process
• Continued to write staff performance appraisals
• Submitted request to OPAL Help to make necessary changes to specific loan rules to enact our policy change of making serials non-circulating

Happy marchFIRST! How are you moving minds?

Do you like working with graduate and continuing education students? Do you want to work at an OhioLINK member library?  Do you like to teach information literacy skills? Do you want to live in southeast Ohio? If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then read the Outreach Librarian position description for MPOW.

Yeah, I know I keep saying I will post soon. The first month of the semester is always busy with First Year Seminar instruction. I've also begun my new assignment as interim web coordinator for muskingum.edu.  So…I'm a bit busy at the moment.

However, I wanted to alert those in the greater WMCO listening area that I have my first Eclectic Radio show of the semester this Sunday night from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. I will be playing some of my favorite dance and techno tracks that I discovered over the summer. I don't have all of the songs picked out yet, but here is a partial play list:

• Complicated 3speakerhigh Extended Mix featuring Sabrina Gardner by Fiore and Inzerillo 
• Automatic by Ultra Nate 
• Break My Fall by Tiesto featuring BT
• Do You Feel Me by Tiesto featuring Julie Thompson
• Sweet Things by Tiesto featuring Charlotte Martin
• In the Dark by Maxi Jazz and Christian Burns
• Carry Me Away (Original Club Mix) by Chris Lake featuring Emma Hewitt 
• Cry for You (Extended Mix) by September
• Little Bird (Utah Saintsremix Edit) by Annie Lennox

I'm planning on picking up the 80's gauntlet thrown by the Faculty Executive Secretary in his remarks during Fall Faculty Conference. I'm going to have to see if I can find my Katrina and the Waves CD this weekend. So, take this post as your advance warning Todd! I'm thinking that my other show this semester will be some more tribal chant (e.g. Enigma and Deep Forest).

I will probably be walking on sunshine at work on Friday. My calendar for week three has been jam packed with instruction, meetings, and getting a handle on the web site.

This will be my fifth time teaching the class and the second time using a wiki. Wiki-ists will rail against me for not using a wiki the right way.

We have Blackboard on campus. I should probably use it. I don't because I would only use it to store files. I tried using Blackboard the first time I taught and it didn't work out so well.

Classes have just started and I already feel behind. I am going to be teaching this semester…which was not planned. A coworker and I take turns teaching our 2 credit hour Library Research Methods class. She was offered a job in Pittsburgh and will be leaving at the end of the month. I'm picking up the class. I'll be teaching Tuesday and Thursdays from 12:30 to 1:20 p.m.  

I'm still planning on writing about the changes we made this summer.  

I've been busy this month. I just haven't been blogging. I plan on writing more about some of the bigger projects soon. Here are the highlights…

• Reactive weeding and shifting in our reference collection to eliminate a row of shelves to make more room at the computers.
• Withdrawing those weeded reference books from our catalog.
• Selecting books in the juvenile collection for weeding after education faculty confirmation.
• Adding a "Book Quick Search" to go with the existing "Article Quick Search" on the library's web site.
• Adding a MeeboMe widget to the library's web site.
• Decommissioning the Reference Desk in prep for a combined Service Desk at our existing Circulation Desk at the start of Fall term. (How many times can I say desk in one run-on sentence? If you answered three you are correct.)
• Getting ready to switch offices with Brian in two weeks.
• Getting ready for the OPAL conference.
• Finalizing the changes of the redesign of the OPAL catalog.
• Tearing out the kitchen at home. This is the last room to be redone since we started working on the house in July 2004.
• Finding a brick floor in this greenhouse/stall/thing attached to the garage that was full of junk when we bought the house.
• Going to the farm to see my mom and sister who was on vacation for a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned for more details. I may also share the fun as we begin our final descent towards the first day of classes…only four weeks for those last minute projects! 

Should unused vacation be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should unused vacation be forgot,
and money on the bottom line?

For unencumbered funds, my dear,
for unencumbered funds,
we'll take our full four weeks next year,
and spend every last dime.

Our monograph acquisitions work flow is out of wack. I didn't count how many boxes of books came in this week, but I know we're nearing 100 for the past couple of weeks.

There are multiple issues by having the majority of our books arrive in June and July (besides overloading acquisitions and cataloging). The biggest challenge I see is one of perception. Our students and faculty are on campus September to May. They only see a small number of new books coming in during those months. I'm sure that our students never realize how many tangible books come in over the summer, because they are already processed and shelved by the time they are back on campus in the August.

I have some ideas on how to even out our work flow, but I'm always looking for good ideas that work. Feel free to share what works on your campus by writing a comment (it won't show until I approve it).

May went by way to fast. I suppose two weeks of vacation helped move things along.

I spent my first week of vacation back at the beginning of May working on outside projects. I scraped paint. I mulched. I also did a day trip to the 'burgh to visit some friends and see the old houses.

I hadn't been to Pittsburgh proper since we moved to Ohio. It was kind of sad visiting the old neighborhood.  It also doesn't help that Trader Joe's is now in East Liberty.  Wal-Mart just doesn't cut it. Oh great and benevolent Target site selectors, please build a store in Zanesville! Oh, and thank you Chipotle site selectors! We love your burrito goodness.

I spent a lot of time at work in the middle of the month extracting holdings data for specific publishers from our shared catalog. I wrote a proposal identifying a couple of ways to allocate cost shares for e-book collections. My preference is to follow the OhioLINK formula since that is how OPAL's share was derived, but the directors need to make the final call on how we are going to split our share of the costs.

I'm enjoying the remaining hours of my second week of vacation. I spent most of this last week at the farm. I went up on May 26 and came back late this past week to attend an OhioLINK meeting on Friday. Yeah, I know, lame to do a meeting during vacation. I still have a couple more days to use before the end of June. We're under the "use em or lose em" policy at "Fish with Teeth Grrr" College. 

I wonder how fast June will go? ECSTI students tend to keep us busy. My trip to DC for ALA Annual will also make time fly.