We are happy to announce that after many years of service, the library's old Matterhorn and Kilimanjaro printers were replaced with new HP 9050 printers on December 12th. The new printers are very fast and efficient. They default to duplex printing that helps save paper and makes longer documents easier to manage. The new printers are keeping the familiar names Matterhorn and Kilimanjaro. We appreciate the efforts of Rachel Vacek, Barry Dombro, and Danny Sulkin, who evaluated the condition of our old printers; recommended the printer upgrades; and prepared the request for our new printers. Danny and Rachel had the new printers up and running soon after their arrival. We are grateful to Dean Bradford for funding this much needed equipment purchase for the library.

As Rachel collects information on usage, access restrictions, and other characteristics of our library databases, she is noting which WML databases could be made available outside Owen. In December we opened access to both MarketLine Business Information Centre and Business Insights to the larger Vanderbilt community. We hope to do so with other databases paid for by WML, as long as the increased access is within the limits specified by our database subscription contracts, and it will not decrease the availability of the databases by Owen students, faculty, and staff.

Congratulations to Amia! She and her co-authors received notice in December that their article, Going Boldly Beyond the Reference Desk: Practical Advice and Learning Plans for New Reference Librarians Performing Liaison Work has been accepted for publication in the July 2006 issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship pending minor editorial revisions. In addition, Amia's book review of European Business--Fact and Figures--Data 1998-2002 will be published in January's Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship , volume 11, issue 1.

The Secret Santa Committee (Rachel and Laura) planned the second Annual Walker Library Holiday Party, which was also attended by our library student assistants and Owen ITS staff. Our thanks to Rachel and Laura, who created and conducted a Christmas Movie Trivia game, with a prize; managed the Secret Santa gift exchange; coordinated the pot-luck; and had fun in planning the event. The team of Amia and Elaine won a prize for getting the most answers correct in the Christmas Movie Trivia game.

For December, we received a total of 183 questions at the information services desk. This is down from the 232 questions that we had during the same time period last year. This December, we had 78 directional questions, 90 reference questions, and 15 faculty research requests. Compared to last year, we had 26 more directional questions, 75 fewer reference questions, and the same number of faculty requests.

Amia finalized a form for tracking reference questions that the WML librarians aren't able to answer using the current collection. The purpose of this form is to help us recognize any gaps we may have in our collection that we may need to address.

As part of the Career Planning Collection (CPC) update, the Collections Team decided to change the checkout period for all users for circulating materials in this collection. They will now circulate for 14 days, with the ability to be renewed. This allowed us to move many items that we kept in CPC reference because of their high demand to the CPC circulating collection.

Rahn and Deborah have made good progress on updating the CPC. The collection is being weeded and they are determining which titles need to be updated. Older items that have been removed from the collection have been placed in our book sale and have been hot items among our students. We have also received the approval of the Heard Library Committee on Collections to shadow the records in Acorn of older, outdated career titles from NetLibrary.

This spring we will be working on an extensive evaluation of our electronic databases. Amia has divided all of our databases into groups for analysis. Rachel is working on a standardized form that we can use for the evaluation.

No Owen course related instruction sessions were taught during December.

In instruction, marketing, and/or outreach activities, Deb Sommer:

• Developed a survey to query Owen staff on interests and needs for a library workshop (not administered yet)
• Met with three faculty members: Anchada Charoenrook, about resources for bond research; Bill Cleary, about investment analyst resources; and David Furse, about doing instruction on corporate valuation for his class.

In support of Faculty Research Services, Deb completed:

• 25 updates to the Faculty Research Database (for three faculty members)
• 10 new records for the Faculty Research Database (for two faculty members)

Rahn met with five BIS clients in December, from a variety of businesses. Two of the clients were Owen alumni; two were research affiliate members; and one was a corporate affiliate member.

The month of December saw the usual busy wind-down of MOD II classes at Owen, student preparations for finals and a lull in activity mid-month as students left for the holiday break.

We began December addressing training issues with the student assistants. It has been noted that some students were less proficient in desk procedures than others. Several of our student workers were new, and most had started work during the time when staff vacancies were being addressed. Brent emailed the public services staff to get their input on any problems they may have observed when working with student assistants. In the meantime, Jeff created a checklist for the students to determine where additional training might be needed. With the approaching holiday break, there wasn’t enough time to complete the survey of the students. This will be done once everyone is back in early January. Individualized training sessions will then be developed to address any deficiencies that have been identified.

As noted in the November report, David, Laura, and Brent had met to discuss increasing costs to the library in processing some faculty delivery requests. The increased costs derived from the necessity to photocopy articles, scan into Adobe Acrobat, and then create a PDF document. We all agreed that we should charge for copying and scanning just as we do for other photocopy requests. Brent worked with Laura and Elaine to determine the correct account center numbers to use for this income.

Use of the reserve collection increased as we neared the end of MOD II. We were required to limit some items to a one-hour loan period due to heavy demand just before exams.

Brent and Laura met with Mandy Henk and Jo Bilyeu of the Law Library on December 7th to discuss issues relating to electronic and hard copy reserves. Brent and Mandy were to report their findings to the Circulation and Access Committee meeting January 4th.

In early December, Laura discovered that a programmed key on the cash register had been accidentally omitted during an overall reprogramming of the machine last summer. This key was necessary for Laura to input income for BIS photocopies under the correct account center number. Brent contacted the cash register company, and a representative was sent out to reprogram the key for us. While he was here, the company representative explained some additional aspects of cash register operation to the Access Services Staff. He also informed us of a possible way to simplify our credit card procedures. We plan to investigate that possibility sometime in the new year.

Brent received an ILL request from Merry Balthrop for some WML microfilm reels housed at the Annex. After checking with Deborah Brooks, it was determined the microfilm cannot circulate to another location in the system. Brent offered our services to copy the MFM articles, and Laura processed the request upon their arrival. Merry was pleased that we could fill the request in that manner.

Extended hours for exams were offered Friday, December 9th and Saturday, December 10th. The library remained open until 11:30 pm on both nights. The library provided pizza for Owen students on Friday evening. We have done this in the past, and it is always very popular with the Owen students. Thanks go out to Charles Leek, Chelsea Pulaski and Tara Moss for volunteering to cover the extra hours those two days.

During the holiday break, some faculty TAs needed to borrow quite a few current periodical issues for overnight use in the building. While this is not an unusual request during the break period, the number of items requested was unusually high. For that reason, Access Services and Information Services Staff plan to develop additional procedures to avoid having too many issues of a particular title off the shelf at any given time.

In other departmental activities: Brent and Jeff worked on reserve and Blackboard requests for new faculty who had not yet arrived on campus; Brent and Jeff assisted David in compiling statistics for ARL during the month; and Brent processed staff and student timesheets during Elaine's vacation.

89	Articles linked in Blackboard
11	Outdated links deleted from Blackboard
108	Pages scanned for Blackboard
67	Hard-copy items placed on reserve
2	Books delivered to Divinity Library for Reserve
3	Books delivered to Faculty
20	Documents delivered to Owen faculty (214 pages total)
2	Microfilm reels requested from Annex to fill ILL request
455	Items charged
475	Items discharged
154	Reserves charged
17	Holds placed
14	Study rooms reserved for faculty and special occassions

Deborah and Sylvia have finished processing all the withdrawals from the Career Planning Collection. Sylvia moved the City Book of Lists to Career Reference, and began the process of binding the last volume/year of periodical titles that are being converted to Electronic format. Deborah provided information for the ARL statistics regarding the total computer file purchases and total expenditures for electronic serials. She also provided information on the bindery processing for the ARL survey, and compiled a spreadsheet of funding expenditures for David, Amia and Rachel.

Deborah and Sylvia are willing and committed members of the Walker staff and to their co-workers, who are just as diligent, they would like to say, "A job well done this year, but just watch us in 2006!"

Collections

263	Periodical issues processed
15	Reference serials processed
10	New Books processed
29	Pages of Looseleaf materials filed
322	Microfiche filed
79	Volumes processed for the Bindery
13	Volumes processed for the Library Annex
20	Table of Contents packets compiled
16	Claims processed, Ebsco titles claimed on Ebsconet

Acquisitions

25	Orders placed (10 via web form/15 regular orders)
1	Renewal invoice for Electronic databases

Rachel attended the monthly Technology Support Coordinators meeting, where Jody reported on various hardware and software upgrade and maintenance projects planned for the holiday season. He said that two project teams have also been formed: the Heard Website Maintenance Project Team and the SFX Maintenance Project Team. Rachel is a member of the latter team.

The GIS Task Force, in which both Rachel and Rahn are members, submitted a list of recommendations to address GIS services at Vanderbilt. The Strategy & Planning Council asked Flo to go back to the GIS Task Force to discuss the need to reduce planned personnel from three or four to one staff member, using existing staff as back-ups, or drawing in a student assistant from Peabody, should they decide to support such an effort. The tentative start date for the GIS program - a system-wide service that will probably be physically housed at Peabody - is July 2006.

• Amia Baker prepared and gave a presentation about basic business reference sources to the Central Library reference librarians on December 8th.

• On December 6th, David met with a representative from CBG (Central Business Group) to discuss the possible use of compact shelving within the Walker Library. Owen's Dean Bradford is exploring the possibility of renovating portions of the library during the summer.

• In support of her work on the Staff Development Committee, Rahn attended numerous committee and planning meetings; drafted and finalized the committee's survey for how we can help other committees; accepted a leadership role on the development of the Learning Organization; and is now working directly with Pam Brown (VU Human Resources) on this on behalf of the committee.
• In other activities, Rahn invited and attended a Masters In Technology thesis presentation for Pedro Tapia de Miguel on the impact of logistics and outsourcing announcements on shareholder wealth.
• She worked with Amia on the content for a brochure for faculty and students on “Who To Contact for What in the Library.”
• Rahn presented David with space use/floor plan ideas for the Library.
• For the Career Collection, Rahn completed a review of several primary publisher's materials and made acquisitions/updating recommendations for: WetFeet, Vault, JobBank, BIZJournals Book of Lists, and assorted other titles. She withdrew outdated materials from both the career collection and the open stacks, freeing up much needed shelf space.

• Rachel spent time working with Rahn and Celia to help the Staff Development Committee move forward, and to develop a better understanding of a “learning organization.” Rachel made several updates to that committee's wiki, as well as creating a timeline for the committee to consider at its next meeting.

• Introduction to e-Procurement and Paymentnet Training (12/01) - David and Elaine
• Research Services Committee (12/01) - David
• Retirement Party for Martha Young (12/01) - David and others
• The 12 Bad Habits that Hold Good People Back, presentation for OGSM staff, by Jim Waldroop (12/02) - Rachel and David
• Science/Engineering Library Director candidate presentation (12/02) - Rahn, David, Rachel, and Amia
• GIS Task Force meeting with Flo Wilson (12/05) - Rachel and Rahn
• Owen Presentation by National City Bank on Private Wealth Management (12/07)- Amia
• Amia's Basic Business Reference Resources presentation (12/08) - David and Deborah
• Staff Development Committee Meeting (12/08) - Rachel
• Owen Holiday Party for Faculty & Staff @ Cheekwood (12/10) - Rachel and Deb
• Space Planning Meeting with other Heard Library Directors (12/12) - David
• Technology Support Coordinators Meeting (12/13) - Rachel
• Walker Library Holiday Party and Potluck Lunch (12/14) - All WML Staff
• Webinar: Real-Time Collaboration: Change the way you do business (12/15) - Rachel
• OGSM Holiday Luncheon and Faculty/Staff Recognition (12/16) - Rachel, Amia, Deborah and Sylvia
• Central Library Holiday Party (12/19) - David
• Communications Committee Meeting (12/19) - Deb
• Heard Library Strategy & Planning Council Informational Session (12/20) - Rachel
• Collections Committee Meeting (12/20) - Amia
• WML Weekly Information Services Meetings (Thursdays @ 10:00) - All Information Services staff
• WML Weekly Staff Meetings (Wednesdays @ 3:30) - All WML staff
• WML Weekly Acquisitions and Technical Processing Meetings (Fridays @ 2:00) - Deborah and Sylvia