Library Highlights from OPG, vol. 1, no. 3

FY 2011 Priority Action Items
The Library’s Strategic Directions and Priority Action Items represent an annual compilation of areas where the Library intends to make significant contributions during the year. It’s one way for us to state publicly (to ourselves and the community) what our priorities are for the year, and then work to hold ourselves accountable to fulfilling these goals. The process for developing this year’s list began in the summer with input from every Library department, and work by staff and departments to achieve these goals has been ongoing since then. The overriding strategic directions have remained essentially unchanged for the past few years, but the specific action items for how we strive to accomplish those directions do change year to year and reflect our library-wide priorities. The document listing the library-wide priorities for FY 2011 is available at http://library.brown.edu/about/strategicDirections.php. These library-wide priorities also serve as the basis for individual department goals that may be more specific in support of the library-wide goals:

• Provide Effective Access to Scholarly Resources
• Position the Library at the Core of Teaching, Learning, and Research
• Enhance Our Technological Infrastructure
• Transform Library Facilities
• Seek Opportunities for Stewardship and External Funding
• Assess Outcomes and Improve Library Operations

Recruitment update
Recruitment activities are in full gear as searches are underway for six positions:

• Associate University Librarian for Research and Outreach Services
• Resource Acquisition and Management Librarian
• Library Materials Conservator
• Manuscripts Processing Archivist
• Digital Humanities Librarian
• Library Communications and Stewardship Specialist

Beginning in March, we will have on-campus interviews with candidates for some of the above positions, and others will follow as the spring semester unfolds. Two other searches — for the E-Sciences Librarian and the Director for Special Collections — will be launched later in the spring.

All-staff Meeting
Reminder that there will be an All-staff meeting on Thursday, March 10 at 10am in the Lownes Room. Topics to be covered include: a brief review of departmental goals, an update on current searches and open positions, an overview of the Library Space Planning Study, and a report on the outlook for the Library’s FY 2012 budget. Light refreshments will be available.

Building Updates
The following projects are winding down with last minute finishes being completed over the next few weeks: Sciences 4th Floor, Rock Level A, Rock Lobby

The following projects are now complete: CDI camera room Rock room 217, Installation of 3M gate at Orwig.

Current projects underway: Sciences Library 14th Floor Carpeting A16 & A17

The following projects are due to begin in the very near future: Hecker Center Swipe Card Access, Overview of the John Hay Reading Room, Rock Fire Safety Upgrade, Emergency Lights and Signage floors 104 (shortly after vacation), Rock Electrical Relays – Light panel in Circulation

Scheduled but in the far future is: Adding sprinklers to the Rock. Planning should begin this summer but actual work will not commence at the earliest the summer of 2012.

From Scholarly Resources

Outreach: Among outreach efforts this year, SR members have made personal contact with all new faculty and are endeavoring to make contact with all faculty currently on campus, a tall order, so stay tuned on that one. In our efforts to get into all First Year Seminars we have also established a set of three things we try to get across to all First Years: How to Contact your Subject Specialist, an introduction to Academic Search Premier and an introduction to Citation Managers (EndNote, RefWorks, Zotero).

Collections: Working with David Banush and ebook vendor eBrary(tm), SR has set up two Patron Driven Acquisition pilot projects, one in Anthropology (Quist) and one in Computer Science (Pedersen) for ebooks. Access Services has loaded MARC records for these ebooks in Josiah. When a patron discovers one in Josiah, they can then go to the ebook and if they view more than 10 pages of text, spend more than 10 minutes actively engaged in reading the book or print anything, the ebook is purchased and becomes a permanent part of the collection. We have also set up two interdisciplinary funds this year to address particular curricular support needs. These are: Haitian Studies (Coulombe/Bouchard) and Archaeology (Straughn). The Haitian project focuses on acquiring recently published titles filling gaps in art history, religious studies, cultural studies, language studies and literature. The archaeology fund addresses gaps in more recent technological sub-specialties of archaeology including archaeological material sciences and engineering, visualization and cultural heritage management.

We are also pleased to have Carina Cournoyer as our new Social Sciences librarian. She has hit the ground running with her three assigned disciplines: Political Science, Economics and International Relations and has become a member of the Outreach Committee.

From SR members:

• Karen Bouchard collaborated with Prof. Dietrich Neumann on researching, editing and writing catalog entries for the book “The Structure of Light”: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture, (Yale, 2010) in connection with an exhibition held at the Yale University Art Gallery.
• Peter Harrington contributed nine entries to the Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America ed. Martin Manning (ABC-CLIO, 2011) and published “If at first you do succeed” [John Trumbull's Sortie from Gibraltar] in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 23 (3) (Spring, 2011), 90-93.
• Bill Monroe has published an article “Benedict of St. Andrea”, in The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Brill, 2010).
• Holly Snyder and Peter Harrington have been designated by Joint Resolution of the General Assembly (H5141) as members of the Rhode Island Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration Commission, under the leadership of former RI Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams.
• Lee Pedersen attended an event presented by the University of Rhode Island Libraries. The speaker was Bill Maltarich, Electronic Resources Librarian, NYU Acquisitions Department. He discussed the two-platform strategy that NYU has developed for e-books, NYU’s experiences using the ebrary platform to host purchased e-book (and other) content, and the importance of the e-books criteria NYU has established. He also touched on challenges with e-books in general and where he is seeing e-books heading in the next year or so.
• Li Wang presented a paper entitled ““Publishing as Soft Power: A Booming Chinese Cultural Enterprise and Its Implications to Academia,” at the ACPSS-Harvard conference in Nov. 2010. It will be published in a forthcoming book, Challenges Facing China in an Era of Globalization. He also published an article, “The Origin and Development of Daoist Canon, Editions and Reference Tools”, in Tianlu Luncong: Journal of the Society of Chinese Studies Librarians, vol. 1 (2011), pp. 99-114.

–
Edwin A. (Ned) Quist
Performing Arts and Anthropology Librarian

February 28, 2011