Quarterly Reports Posted

The division quarterly reports for the Second Quarter (October through December 2008) are now available in SharePoint under Office of the Dean, Quarterly Reports. Just to pique your interest, here are few interesting facts from the reports:

• The division spent a good part of this quarter working on a project to update the Young periodicals area. After consultation with PNM and Binding, we started a project to check all the labels on the shelves and make sure they were for currently received materials. The student worker made two complete passes and cleared out almost 3 boxes of labels for materials which are no longer received. This clears the way for PNM to rearrange the area in January 2009. This also assists Binding in knowing whether they are waiting for items to bind or not. (CTS)
• Voyager patron loads for faculty and staff now are coming in with email addresses as part of the record. This will significantly reduce the number of printed notices that are created in Voyager and will better improve communications with our UK employee borrowers. (IT)
• With the addition of most UK faculty, staff and student email addresses to the system the CallSlip (a.k.a. BookExpress) email notification has been implemented. Users will now receive emails when their material has arrived. (IT)
• The University continues to push for all employees to discontinue receiving their remuneration statement in paper form. The University currently has had almost 5,000 employees opt out of their paper statements. When this number reaches more than 50% of the employees, then we will no longer receive any paper remuneration statements. This will save the University thousands of dollars each fiscal year. (Planning and Administration)
• The majority of reference transactions continue to be our walk up traffic at the desks but virtual reference is growing. During the last quarter 40% of our reference transactions were either by phone, email or chat. [Note: check out more detail on the changes that R&E is making in the full report] (R&E)
• And a few items from SCDP

o Daily Racing Form test database is available at http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?page=simple;g=drf
o Finalized the redesign of the KDL oral history interface
o The William B. Keightley Oral History Project (first seven interviews) was placed online in October gathering 4,455 hits
o Project Archivist hired for the Athletics project to create a web presence for fans and researchers using archival material and oral historiesThe Kentuckian digitization project is scanned and ocr’d through 1975 and is slated to go live soon on Explore UK

Denise Hunter Hired as Library Tech

Andrea Denise Hunter, who goes by Denise, has been hired for the Library Technician position in Monographs Acquisitions, Collections and Technical Services Division. Since July 2005, Denise has been employed in the Learning Resource Center at Bluegrass Community and Technical College. She has a Bachelor of Music degree from Morehead State and has begun taking graduate classes in library science from UK. Her start date with the UK Libraries will be February 16. We wish her much success in her position.

Department Heads Minutes

The meeting minutes from the January 15th department heads’ meeting are now posted on the Department Heads SharePoint site.

Speaking Volumes Newsletter

The Libraries’ external newsletter, Speaking Volumes, is published twice a year and sent to our donors and friends. The newsletter is created by Jessica Hughes and Sharon Ross and often calls upon press releases written by our PR liaison, Whitney Hale. The PDF version of the newsletter is regularly posted on the Libraries website at http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/page.php?lweb_id=527 If you haven’t seen it lately, take a lot at the Fall and Spring 2008 issues online.

What Faculty Can Do To Help

Dean of the Graduate School and Interim Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, Jeannine Blackwell, has sent a list of tips to all faculty and instructors of record who teach undergraduates. It has also been sent it to the advising network and to course coordinators of multi-section courses, who will share it with other graduate assistants. I’ve posted the list on our SharePoint site under Office of the Dean, Misc Documents.

ARL Appoints Lisa Carter as Visiting Program Officer

From a recent press release from ARL: ARL has appointed Lisa Carter as a Visiting Program Officer (VPO) to work with the ARL Special Collections Working Group, effective in January 2009. Lisa’s VPO assignment supports an ARL objective to promote collaborative integration and enduring access to comprehensive research collections and resources in all formats that could be used to advance research, teaching, and learning. Lisa’s primary responsibility is to collaborate with working group Chair Alice Prochaska, University Librarian, Yale University, to develop agendas, to facilitate the sharing of ideas that will advance the ARL objective, and to assist with planning and preparation for a conference in late 2009.

ACRL Updates its Scholarly Communication Toolkit

From American Libraries Direct

ACRL updates its Scholarly Communication Toolkit

ACRL has released an updated version of its popular Scholarly Communication Toolkit in a new format and with updated content. The toolkit continues to provide context and background by summarizing key issues to offer quick, basic information on scholarly communication topics. It also links to examples of specific tools, including handouts, presentations, and videos for libraries to adapt and use on their own campuses....

A New Technique for Photo Identification

From American Libraries Direct

A new technique for photo identification

Scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles have developed a new method for authenticating historic photographs that will have broad implications for museum collections, art historians, collectors, and conservators. Each chemical printing process leaves behind a series of markers that collectively are as distinctive as a fingerprint. The GCI researchers have now identified the signatures associated with different photographic processes to provide a scientifically-based method for provenancing and authenticating a majority of 20th-century photographs....Getty Conservation Institute, Jan. 8

DNA Could Unlock Some Manuscript Mysteries

From American Libraries Direct

DNA could unlock some manuscript mysteries

Thousands of manuscripts produced in medieval Europe still exist today, but scholars have long struggled with questions about when and where many of them originated. Now a researcher at North Carolina State University is using modern advances in genetics to shed light on their origins. Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson is perfecting techniques for extracting and analyzing the DNA contained in the parchment pages in order to create a genetic database that can be used to establish the date and locale for particular manuscripts....North Carolina State University, Jan. 12

WorldCat on your mobile phone

From American Libraries Direct

WorldCat on your mobile phone

Now you can use your mobile phone to find materials in libraries near you—and help OCLC test a new pilot service. Available in the United States and Canada, this six-month pilot lets you try out mobile search of WorldCat libraries and suggest improvements or additional features. WorldCat has partnered with mobile-technology leader Boopsie and joined its growing array of search channels. When you download the Boopsie application to your phone, you get library search plus these additional channels. Start by typing this URL into your phone’s web browser: www.worldcat.org/m/....WorldCat Mobile

International Survey of Library Automation

From American Libraries Direct

International survey of library automation

Marshall Breeding writes: “This report describes the results of a survey that I conducted to gather data regarding the perceptions of libraries toward their automation systems, the organizations that provide support, and the quality of support they receive. It also aims to gauge interest in open source library automation systems. The survey attracted the most responses from libraries using Millennium, Unicorn/Symphony, and Horizon.”...Library Technology Guides, Jan. 18