What are 5 things about Owen that no one knows? One of the answers from the Owen Bloggers was:

"Library Staff - They are powerhouses in finding research for projects like our China Shanghai construction project. The staff pulled several databases for us with contacts in Shanghai. Pretty cool."

It’s always exciting when a new staff member arrives. Cynthia Kutka began work in February as a term Information Services Librarian. She comes to us with a wonderful background in libraries, management and information consulting. All staff participated in orienting her, and she began working the desk and working on consultations almost immediately. She will be the instruction coordinator and is the Management Library’s rep to the Research Services Committee.

The service model review being led by a project team of Deborah Brooks, Rahn Huber, and Brent Tenpenny, made some progress in the last couple of months. The many articles identified as being helpful were added to a Blackboard course for all staff to review. The team met with Stacy Owens and Debra Stevens to gather information about service models in the Peabody and Science & Engineering Libraries. Staff were asked to provide ideas and information on what they felt should be included in creating a list of "core competencies" for basic customer service and knowledge when staffing the service point. The work of this project team has been moved to a revamped group: Brent Tenpenny will lead the group, and Cynthia Kutka, Laura Norris, and Rachel Vacek will join him. Changes reflect the need to share project responsibilities more equitably with the creation of the Collections project team.

In March, the Library Coordinating Team (team leaders) engaged in a retreat to determine how best to proceed with our many collections issues. Responsibility for collections has been fragmented among several staff, and staff turnover in this area has further affected the operations. Led by Pam Brown from HR, we spent a day visioning what success would look like, identifying the many tasks that need to be accomplished and establishing priorities and a 6 to 9 month timeline. The retreat was very successful, and we have formed a project team led by Deborah Brooks and including Rahn Huber and Hilary Rudsenske to lead us through a revision of our workflow, development of new policies and procedures, and planning for specific collections projects.

Feedback on the new WML website has been quite positive, and we are getting suggestions for further improvement from students and faculty. Rachel is continuing to work on improving the usability, adding additional content, and working with Hilary on the development of additional research guides. We now have 24 web published research guides. Our guides were viewed by 1,253 individuals during the month of March; Historical Market & Stock Data, Careers, and Non-Profits have been the most frequently viewed guides. The Library’s blog, The WML Spotlight, has been very popular, and several of the staff have met to develop procedures for ensuring that news is added regularly.

In April the Walker Management Library will be celebrating its 25th year in the Owen Graduate School of Management building. On the 19th we will have a celebration; we will be inviting former Management Library staff to join us. (Carol Dickerson, former director, will be able to come.) All members of the Owen community and staff from the Heard Library will be invited. A donor has offered to help us outfit a couple of the library group study rooms with flat panel displays for computer projection; we are hoping for additional gifts from the donor society dinner that will occur on April 21st. All Management Library staff have been helping with the planning for the library event. Brent and Rachel have been gathering archival photographs of the building and 1980’s photographs of the staff to be used in a photo slide show during the celebration. Elaine Hill has been making all the ordering and delivery arrangements for the party.

Two projects affected staff in both the Access Services and Collections areas. MOD III brought increased demand for videotapes that had been housed at the Annex since the 2006 renovation. Until February, there had been only sporadic requests for tapes. Since shelving space in the library is limited, we had left the tape collection offsite until collection decisions could be made. With several requests for tapes being made weekly in early February, it became obvious that the bulk of that collection needed to return to the library. Brent and Deborah Brooks met to work out a plan to have the most needed tapes returned to the library.

A transfer project of bound journal volumes to the Annex continues. Staff continued shifting bound periodical volumes on the 2nd floor, removing additional bound journals, generally those published prior to 1990, at the direction of Deborah Brooks, and preparing bound journals for processing at the Annex by inspecting each volume for missing issues. Alternate measures were taken for housing bound volumes during the short Annex hiatus in accepting additional materials.

The Information Services team began a trial of Libstats, an open-source question counting and tracking software product. Before the month-long trial was over the staff decided to adopt the technology; over time, modifications will be made to enhance the software to best meet our needs. We expect we will use this software for all questions presented to either service desk so that we can gain a better understanding of the total information needs that come to the Library.

Outreach & Administration

A couple of years ago the Library took on the responsibility of entering faculty research publications into a faculty database on the Owen website. Problems with the search functionality and faculty resistance to using the product as developed by a web applications company have resulted in a decision to have faculty maintain their own listings on Owen maintained webpage templates or on the Social Science Research network site. The research will no longer be searchable by keyword.

Flo met with the new president of the Owen Student Government Association to explore improving communication channels between the Library and the students. OSGA helps in a number of ways by encouraging appropriate library behavior among students (food and drink policy, group study room reservation policy). A library fan, he is anxious to help increase the visibility of what we can do to help students.

Flo met with Marshall Turnbull to discuss how the library can better support alumni and to learn more about how the Development and Alumni Relations office works in Owen.

Flo met with Jerrell Shelton, an Owen alumnus engaged in venture capital activities. He was interested in learning more about the library resources marketplace.

Access & Facilities

As usual, MOD III continued to be a busy period for Access Services with significant demand for services such as printing, transparencies and reserves. Annual student projects at Owen make the January/February period one of the more hectic times of the year.

The Library again had extended hours during exams for Mod III. Joe, Bec, and Brent adjusted their work schedules to provide the necessary coverage.

On the day after the Super Bowl, housekeeping staff found evidence of a wide variety of food and beverages having been consumed in the library over the previous weekend. While it was quickly determined the mess was left over from a Super Bowl party held in another part of the building, the inability of library staff to detect users bringing in food through the 2nd floor entrance made it clear some assistance from the Owen community was in order. We contacted the Owen Student Government Association representatives about the problem, and the issue was quickly resolved through an announcement in Owen Daily News.

Access Services staff worked with Owen administrators and staff from the Science and Engineering Library to provide laptops for a class being taught by the Dean in February.

The group study rooms were renumbered to comply with campus-wide protocols and study room nameplates were installed at the same time. During the renovation the rooms had been numbered in a way that was very confusing; we were able to implement a more logical approach. The new nameplates reflected the naming selected by the winners of the eBay auction in January. As part of a fund raiser, Owen people were invited to bid on naming rights for each of the 25 rooms; these winning names will remain in place until they are renamed next year through the same process.

We purchased more durable staplers in March. The ones we had been using were not holding up well at all. The new, heavy duty staplers have proven to be much more reliable.

We experienced problems with the compact shelving on the 2nd floor in March. Several sections were sticking in one position, requiring use of the manual override system. The vendor replaced a transformer, and the shelving is now working properly.

We placed numerous requests for temperature adjustments during this period. HVAC personnel found and connected a heating element that was not connected in the staff area; workroom temperatures are finally much warmer.

	February	March
Charge Item	358	405
Discharge Item	507	621
Received from Libs	314	170
Renew Item	52	14
Charge Reserve	213	335
Renew Reserve	7	3
Create Hold	21	23

Information Services

Two new research guides were added to our website in February: “Mergers & Acquisitions” and “SEC Forms & Documents”. Including the work done in March, we now have 24 research guides on the website. Many of us were kept busy with our team assignments for David Furse’s undergraduate class “The Entrepreneurial Challenge” and with EMBA consultation groups as the EMBAs prepared for their trip to China. In March, Cynthia and Hilary met with a team of Net Impact conference organizers. They prepared and distributed a guide and search strategy to help the team identify speakers and moderators for the conference, which will be held at Owen this upcoming November.

In February the information services team received a total of 206 questions. This is a 37% decrease from the 328 questions that we had during the same time period last year. We had 40 directional questions and 8 faculty research requests. In March we received a total of 198 requests. This is an 18% decrease from the 181 questions that we had during the same time period last year. 75% or 149 were reference transactions; we had 49 directional questions and 30 faculty requests. These declines may be attributed to the reduction in reference service desk hours that we made in January; the reduction will be monitored closely in the coming months.

Acquisitions and Technical Processing

	February	March
Statistics: Serials
Periodicals processed	228	188
Reference	46	36
Claims processed	27	23
Looseleaf pages filed	39	44
Annex Transfers	177 volumes (101 titles)	129 volumes (65 titles)
Bindery (sent)	33 volumes (28 titles)	20 volumes (15 titles)
Bindery (returned)	98 volumes (62 titles)
New Books Processed	22	35
Statistics: Acquisitions
Books Ordered	0	27
Books Ordered Reserves	8	2
Special Acquisitions	2	0
Table of Contents Packets	18 (118 pages compiled)	18 (75 pages compiled)

Sylvia and Deborah met to discuss the microfiche filing and assess the current cabinets used to store this collection. We’ve found that due to the summer renovation the microfiche collection is in need of some serious organization and re-sorting. A project has been planned to review and shift the entire microfiche collection.

Sylvia and Jud (student) have also been very involved with claiming and searching for missing issues. Response rates to claims have been very slow. We are also taking note of receipt of titles that have been cancelled or converted to electronic format. We are updating the Control records so that “false” claims are not produced.

Joe met with Deborah and Brent early in the month to discuss his taking over responsibility for reviewing new book approval slips. This task had been handled by a student most recently, but Deborah felt it should be the sole responsibility of a staff member. With his long-term experience in the library system, Joe seemed a natural choice for the job.

An acquisition of a “special purchase” was made this month. We received funding from the Collections committee to our VLEF fund to order International Directory of Company Histories volumes 59-77 (2004-2006). We will fund the Standing order for future volumes in this series.

Deborah participated in discussions with Rachel and Deb about acquiring electronic resources. We all handle various aspects and addressed the need to streamline this procedure.

Standing in for Deb Sommer, Deborah attended the Library’s Committee on Collections. This meeting was to discuss and make a recommendation on a new set of fund codes for electronic purchases. These new fund codes will assist with tracking, allocating and reporting of expenditures on these resources.

Business Information Service (BIS)

BIS Statistics 2006-2007
Client Meetings		July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Year to date
Owen alum		4	6	3	6	3	6	4	3	1	36
VU alum		1	3			1	1				6
Not Affiliated			2	2	3	1	2				10
Total		5	11	5	9	5	9	4	3	1	52
Research Requests
Owen alum		3		1	1	2					7
VU alum		1									1
Not Affiliated			1	1	3	3	2	1	5	1	17
Total		4	1	2	4	5	2	1	5	1	25
Document Delivery
Total		18	11	18	2	1	17	5	72	150	294
Financials
Monthly Revenue		908	343	915	1244	1787	2073	750	937	2842	11799
Monthly Billing		617	3230	2458	748	1944	100	840	915	809	11661
Client Count
Current		69	68	68	68	67	68	71	71	71
New						2	3
Deactivated		-1			-1	-1
Total		68	68	68	67	68	71	71	71	71

Rahn met with Melinda Allen and then presented to the Owen Corporate Ambassadors a seminar on library resources for use in promoting Owen as they work with Dean Bradford and Peter Veruki in their external activities.

Rahn provided a tour of the Management Library to VU Law Librarian Stephen Jordan.

Technology

Rachel and Flo met with Jody and George to explore options of more LITS support for the Management Library.

Rachel also organized and led a Blogging Forum and invited all library staff to join in an open discussion on blog development and management within the Heard Library system. Thirteen people attended and as a result of the meeting, Rachel will be collaborating with Celia Walker to develop a Project Team to be under the Communications Committee.

Attendance at the Web Spiders meetings for February and March were higher than normal due to lots of interesting discussion topics and the campus-wide server migrations, but mainly due to the discussion of the Vanderbilt University homepage redesign process. Rachel provided lots of feedback about the screen shots of possible first and second level pages on the Vanderbilt Homepage Redesign blog.

Daylight Savings time caused many headaches in Owen, and Rachel spent a lot of time updating staff on how to deal with all the issues.

Rachel added a KVM switch at the reference desk for a second computer for Charlene Cunniffee to use when working Sundays throughout the semester. She also replaced a circulation computer, created a new image for the public workstations, and with Danny Sulkin in Owen IT, reimaged all the public workstations. Many updates to the WML website were also made in February.

Rachel continued to post news items to The WML Spotlight. On WML Tech Updates, she continued to post notes from various technological meetings and webcasts she attended, as well as a few other items she found relevant and interesting.

Staff Activities & Professional Development

Since we were unable to hold our traditional Secret Santa gift exchange and pot-luck party last December, we held a Secret Valentine Celebration instead. The festivities began a week prior to Valentine's Day, culminating in a pot-luck luncheon complete with games. Names were drawn out of a hat, and each person was tasked to perform random acts of kindness for the person they picked. The food was wonderful and it was a great opportunity to take a break mid-term. Rachel and Laura planned the event.

Jody Combs and Rachel attended a Staff Development Committee meeting to share with the group their experience and thoughts regarding their mentoring relationship over the past year. They shared the goals, a list of various exercises and materials consulted, and the types of professional information Jody and she swapped. The S&P Council had asked the SDC to investigate whether a mentoring program for existing as well as new employees might benefit the library. The program could be designed to provide ongoing work-related advice and support or simply focus on career-building.

Library-wide Committee and Project Team activities:

Brent
- CAC representative for WML
- GetIt! Implementation Project Team
- Seating Sweep Project Team

Laura
- Faculty Document Delivery Service Project Team

Cynthia
- Research Services Committee

Rachel
- GetIt! Implementation Project Team
- SFX Project Team
- Technology & Training Support Coordinators (notes)
- Electronic Resource Management System (ERMS) Project Team

Deborah
- Collections Committee

Rahn
- Project Management Project Team
- Staff Development Committee
- Meeting Management Project Team

Other Library activities:

Cynthia
- Law Library tour
- New Employee Welcome Session

Hilary
- Brown Bag: Creating Instructional Resources Using Camtasia

Rachel
- Paul Gherman's Coffee and Donuts session
- Webcast: Hopping into Library 2.0: Experiencing Lifelong Learning
- Blended Librarians Online Learning Community Webcast: Discussing the Disconnects between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values
- Webcast: Mashups: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That (notes)
- Webcast: Gaming in the Library (notes)
- Meeting Management Training
- Brown Bag: Creating Instructional Resources Using Camtasia

Laura
- Paul Gherman's Coffee and Donuts session
- Meeting Management Training

Sylvia
- Paul Gherman's Coffee and Donuts session
- Meeting Management Training

Rahn
- Meeting Management Training (attended 3; taught 2)
- Reference Forum on Information Literacy
- Blended Librarians Online Learning Community Webcast: “Discussing the Disconnects between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values”
- Brown Bag: Creating Instructional Resources Using Camtasia

Other Activities:

Cynthia
- Click U training session on RSS feeds

Rachel
- Vanderbilt Web Spiders Meetings
- Click U training session on RSS feeds
- LAN Electronic Gaming Tournament hosted by the Vanderbilt Computer Society and sponsored by ITS DigitalLife

Professional work:

Rahn
- Attended local SLA Chapter dinner
- Budget Chair, SLA SARC work continues

Rachel
- 2 conference calls with Emerging Leaders Project Team
- LITA Program Planning Committee work continues