Bradley Selke joined the DMC as the Digital Media Support Specialist on Monday, August 11. He oversees DMC’s operations on evenings and weekends. Please help him feel welcome! His email address is bes13@rice.edu.
Bradley Selke graduated from University of North Texas with a B.A. in Radio, Television and Film in December 2013. He has brought in experiences on audio/video recording and editing and graphics design.
Staff in the Kelley Center, Technical Services, Shelving and the Library Service Center have had a busy eight months relocating collections in preparation for the upcoming renovation of Fondren’s basement.
LSC staff began pulling nearly 30,000 volumes from the Q-TC call number range in October 2014, allowing Shelving staff to do a quick and effective compaction of these collections. Over 110 SFU were emptied in anticipation of the microfilm collection being relocated to the southwest area of the basement.
Kelley Center staff, working with extensive support from staff in Technical and Research Services, began identifying microfilm (and a modest number of print government documents) for housing off-site. This process resulted in the relocation of over 80,000 reels of microfilm to the LSC, with additional materials withdrawn due to chemical breakdown of the film base (aka the vinegar syndrome).
During this intense process, accessions to the LSC from the Woodson had been on hold, but the flow of archival materials from Fondren to LSC has resumed. With all of this activity, it is not surprising that the LSC celebrated a specific milestone: in February 2014, the LSC passed the 1 million collection items count – the off-site collection now stands at nearly 1,100,000.
June 12, 2014
No meeting.
June 19, 2014
The Executive Committee discussed defining key technology skills for library staff. Potential strategies include developing technology competency standards for staff (based on department or roles) and integrating thoughtful consideration of technology skills into the hiring process.
Lowman reported on the renovation kickoff meeting, mentioning Facilities, Engineering and Planning personnel changes. Ana Ramirez, who worked on the previous renovation, will be working closely with us on this renovation. More meetings are scheduled for June 24, after which the detailed work of the design phase will begin, lasting approximately 6 weeks.
Lowman will serve on the CIO search committee.
Janet Thompson will return to work July 7.
June 26
No meeting.
July 3
Shannon Kipphut-Smith visited to discuss the Public Access Working Group (PAWG) report about Fondren’s readiness to support the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) public access policy memorandum and the SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE). Kipphut-Smith acknowledged uncertainty about the development of SHARE, but emphasized the need for the library to be ready. Already the library has many of the crucial pieces in place, including staff expertise and an institutional repository. An important part of Fondren’s efforts will be raising awareness of SHARE and public access issues with key people on campus. Shannon will schedule a meeting with the Research Services group to discuss SHARE and other open access initiatives. The PAWG report will be shared with Fondren staff and will be discussed as part of an upcoming library town meeting.
In addition, the Executive Committee briefly discussed the ARL’s strategic design process, including the six systems of action presented at the Spring 2014 Membership Meeting.
The Executive Committee meeting will be on a summer hiatus until July 31.
Fondren’s Web Team (Diane B., Debra K., Jane Z., Jean A., Lauren M., Sandi E., Jun L. and Jeff K.) saw the implementation of some major updates to the classic catalog go live on June 16th, 2014. These changes were the result of usability studies conducted with students and staff to make the catalog easier to understand and use. Denis G. and Mang S. modified the classic catalog to include an easy to use button bar, better information organization/layout and straightforward terminology.
This summer the Web Team is putting together a plan for the next version of the Fondren Library website. Drupal has been chosen as the content management system and the team is currently evaluating peer institutions for ideas on organizing the site and finding new features and functions to include. The Web Team would love your input at these early planning stages. Please feel free to share your comments/concerns with this brief survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/fondrenweb
Following up on the Horizon Group‘s Spring 2014 report on the general nature of MOOCs, our group plans to present a report in the early Fall entitled “Open Educational Resources as a Factor in the Effective Development of MOOCs.”
Topics include:
Horizon Group members: Amanda Focke (2014, co-chair), Shannon Kipphut (2014 co-chair), Angela Brown (2014), Lauren Mueller (2015), Nyssa Juneau-Kimbrell (2015), Jean Aroom (2015), Mary Brower (2015)
Fondren Library has a new room reservation system! We went live after Memorial Day with a soft launch to figure out any bugs before the Fall semester rush. Here are some important things to know about the new system.
1) If you have fines over $5.00 on your library account, or any overdue books, you won’t be able to log-in to make a reservation.
2) The system deletes your room reservation if the room key is not checked out within fifteen minutes of its specified time.
3) The interface is much more user friendly and intuitive.
4) A live update feature allows you to see what rooms are available at the exact moment that the page is refreshed.
A big thanks goes out to Fondren IT’s Denis Galvin, Mang Sun, and Hanjun Lee, who developed this spiffy new system!
We’d appreciate any feedback so we can make this system as accessible as possible for students. You can contact us at circ@rice.edu.
May 22
No meeting.
May 29
Lowman shared that an architect and a builder have been chosen and that the renovation project kickoff meeting is scheduled for 6/13. She also reported on the Board of Trustees meeting.
The group completed its review of all Fondren’s consortium memberships.
Lowman clarified that 2 7-drawer microfiche cabinets have been purchased for the Kelley Center to improve space use.
The Office of Sponsored Research and the Office of Graduate Studies may be working with Fondren’s Digital Scholarship Services to ease maintenance of the faculty information system by migrating some information from the IR.
The library’s excellent record of assessment and contributions to the SACS accreditation process were complimented recently at a Deans’ Council meeting.
June 5
The group was joined by Debra Kolah, Sandi Edwards, David Bynog and Linda Spiro for a discussion of Fondren’s K-12 initiatives in light of the recent Horizon report on services to the public: http://library.rice.edu/fondren-intranet/horizon-group/Horizon-Group-Report/view
Fondren sends a representative to campus-wide meetings on K-12 efforts. The Welcome Center is primarily responsible for visitors K-8, the Admissions Office handling visitors 9-12 as prospective students. The Fondren paragraph of the script used by student tour guides needs revision. Especially in light of the new room reservation system and the new instructional space (part of the renovation), room reservation policies should be reviewed and revised to best support campus and outreach priorities. Fondren could well emulate the clear guidelines the Welcome Center provides for visitors about group size, duration, etc.: http://visit.rice.edu/index.cfm?p=main.tourrequestform. In Fondren, WRC is asked to provide services for some high schools and Reference is asked to provide services for others, with little overlap. A focus group will be conducted to gather information from visitors about their Fondren experiences. More staff should be given the opportunity to conduct library tours. The need for visitor lockers should be assessed and addressed. Kolah, Edwards, Bynog and Spiro will review outstanding issues; the Executive Committee will revisit these issues later this summer.
The group discussed possible re-uses of the first floor space to be vacated by the obsolete Better Light scanner.
Executive Committee members discussed the proposed library hours for fall and spring semesters.
Executive Committee Meeting Summary, May 15, 2014
The Executive Committee reviewed Fondren’s memberships in consortia and other organizations to ensure that we are getting appropriate value from them.
The Committee set up the schedule for its upcoming meetings:
This project was started in November 2013 in order to place the entire run of News from Fondren in the IR. Everything since 1998 had been done, what remained were the first six volumes, 19 issues, ranging from 1991-1997. The first step was to find the best way to scan the images. Due to the type (freckled) and thickness of the paper, it was decided to use a flatbed scanner. File naming conventions were implemented and staff were trained. All told, over 160 pages were scanned.The scanned pages were then edited for completeness and quality, and the scans were combined into PDF files into their original order and, after metadata was embedded, transferred to the IR where they are now available for viewing.
Link to News from Fondren issues
http://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/75119
A big thank you to Helen Gibbs, Sonia Shankle and Monica Rivero!
Executive Committee Meeting Summary for May 1, 2014
Diane Butler gave an IT and Access Services update, beginning with catalog changes now being tested in the Sirsi test system (cordoba) and soon to be implemented in the live system (alexandria). The changes resulted from feedback in the recent user study on catalog use (http://bit.ly/Sxklxy). The new study room reservation system is set to go live 5/27/14, with formal rollout in the fall. Study rooms affected by the upcoming renovations will be offline beginning after finals until their upgrades are complete, perhaps as early as mid-July. The limits on faculty renewal of material is being changed from 10 years to 5 years; some phasing will be necessary. In order to facilitate renewals, use of handheld devices in faculty offices is being explored. Feature film DVDs will now have a week-long checkout period. Replacement costs for lost books have been updated. The processing fee for a lost book is going up to $40 from $30; no fines will be charged unless the book is found and returned. Microfilm checkout period is one week; no microfilm will be loaned on ILL during the renovation. Fondren is collaborating with the Center for Oral, Visual and Written Communication (COVWC) on updating the furniture in study room 201. Diane is monitoring feasibility of having student workers from Central IT help users in the library evenings and weekends.
Sara Lowman shared library budget scenarios to be presented to the Rice Board of Trustees at the May meeting. We should know shortly after that meeting what has been officially approved. Sara is in talks with leaders from Medical Center institutions regarding resource sharing with Rice.
Sara and the renovation group working on furniture met with Louann Risseeuw, furniture rep for Rice Facilities, Engineering and Planning (FE&P). FE&P is waiting for bidding architects to return Rice’s request for proposal (RFP) for the Fondren renovation. First floor shelving and lighting scenarios are being discussed; current shelving has built-in lighting so lower shelving will require lighting changes wherever it is used.
Diane shared that the renovation group working on designing the instructional space was ready to turn in its final construction recommendations. The group’s other recommendations pertaining to equipment, furniture, etc. are still pending.
User experience factors are being considered in the placement of microfilm readers in the renovation of the Kelley Center. Acquiring more space-efficient microfiche cabinets is also under consideration.
At the next meeting, the group will review the costs and benefits of Fondren’s consortial memberships.
[Because there was not time to report as an agenda item, Melinda Flannery shared after the meeting highlights from the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries, including the following links:
Piper, a repository-agnostic batch deposit tool
https://conferences.tdl.org/tcdl/index.php/TCDL/TCDL2014/paper/view/765
TAMU implementation of ORCIDs across their grad student population:
https://conferences.tdl.org/tcdl/index.php/TCDL/TCDL2014/paper/view/730
Project to develop reliable OCR/transcription for ECCO through scholarly crowd-sourcing and the TypeRight software:
https://conferences.tdl.org/tcdl/index.php/TCDL/TCDL2014/paper/view/778
Three Minute Thesis program:
https://conferences.tdl.org/tcdl/index.php/TCDL/TCDL2014/paper/view/782]
Executive Committee Meeting Summary for May 8, 2014
No meeting
