Campus Updates

[Carleen Huxley]

Please add your campus updates to this thread.

[maeichelberger]

We've hired Kassie Wegner as our new part-time Reference Librarian and we're going into the summer fully staffed at the Reference Desk.

We're currently working on hiring a new senior library clerk and a part-time TA for Reference and Instruction.

We went live with EDS and our newly redesigned homepage on May 15 and will be working on plans for reference and instruction over the summer.  Initial response to EDS has been positive.  Michelle Eichelberger will be presenting a poster about EDS Widgets at SUNYLA on Thursday.

Nicki Lerczak, Instructional Services Librarian, has been working with the campus plagiarism committee, to create a module of resources for students accused of academic integrity violations for remediation purposes.  The module consists of 5 instructional videos and 6 quizzes, addressing the concepts of summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citation.

Michelle Eichelberger and her co-author Bonnie Imler, Library Director at Penn State Altoona, had an article published in the May 2014 issue of College & Research Libraries: "Commercial Database Design vs. Library Terminology Comprehension: Why Do Students Print Abstracts Instead of Full-Text Articles?"

Work continues on cleaning up our Aleph database in preparation for OneBib.  Librarian Cindy Francis is leading this project for us.

Nicki Lerczak was an invited panelist at a roundtable discussion at the May meeting of the GVEP School Library System’s Communication Coordinators group.  The event focused on work and college readiness and the role that K-12 librarians can play, and Nicki was asked to present on the college readiness of today’s students.

[grimesb]

There are many changes coming to SUNYIT.  One of the most interesting is that we are in the process of hiring a new library director.  We are still collecting applications.  If you know of someone who might be interested in applying, please encourage them to do so.  As you may already know, we are merging with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, CNSE.  Some of our offices have already merged:  IT and HR.  We have heard that Cayan Library will become the library for both campuses on January 1.  We have a lot of work ahead of us to be ready.  We have also heard that there will be announcements coming soon about our administration, our new name, and our new schools.   Stay tuned!

[millerjaACC]

Reference and Media Librarian David Ofiara will retire this summer from SUNY Adirondack after 43 years of service. Dave received his MLS in Library Science and his MS in Educational Technology at University Albany. He spent his entire career at this college. He plans to spend time traveling with his wife Kathy and their extended family of four generations.

Emily Goodspeed has been appointed to a one-year temporary appointment as Instructor of Library Science and Digital Services Librarian. Emily is a  graduate of SUNY Adirondack who earned a B.A. in English from St. Rose College and a Masters of Science in Information Science from University at Albany. She has been the part-time cataloging librarian at SUNY Adirondack for three years.

Reference and Instruction Librarian Joyce Miller was invited to present a two-year college perspective in the panel presentation, "Connecting With Today’s First Year Students," at the Eastern New York Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries annual conference in Oswego on May 19. 

[sclippa]

Here at Alfred we're undergoing some major renovations to what are currently the slide room and seminar room on the second floor of the Scholes Library.  These two adjoining rooms are being upgraded and expanded to accommodate a new computer lab and a combined seminar/media viewing room, while maintaining the slide collection in a separate, climate-controlled room.

The new computer lab will help facilitate library instruction and also be available as a classroom for Art History, Art and Design, and Engineering faculty to use for research and student projects.  The lab will remain open and accessible during library hours for students to use.  The expanded seminar room will seat 24 and allow for both media viewing and student or faculty presentations.

We're also pleased to welcome Trevor Riley as our new Engineering/Emerging Technologies Librarian.  Trevor joins us from the Library at The United States Coast Guard Academy in New London CT. where he currently serves as Reference and Instruction Librarian.

[AprilDavies]

Katherine Brent is doing a poster session entitled “Displays: Educating and Marketing” at the SUNYLA conference.

Visiting Librarian Katie DeRusso is Visiting no longer. We are happy to report that she is officially our new Instructional Design Librarian. If you were at the recent CIT conference you may have attended her “Librarians and Instructional Design” session. Katie is also doing a poster session at the SUNYLA conference, along with Adjunct Reference Librarian (& current Albany MSIS student) Brendan Aucoin.

Van Wagenen Library will go public with our instance of EDS in a couple more weeks. 

In college news… Summer construction is underway and there are lots of fences dividing parts of campus so, if you’re coming to SUNY Cobleskill, call for directions first. Prof. Keith Buerker was named best culinary educator in the Northeast by the American Culinary Federation. Prof. Dave Campbell received the same honor last year.

[Rebecca Hyams]

First, some shameless session plugs. Both Joseph Williams and Rebecca Hyams are presenting sessions on Thursday morning at the SUNYLA Conference. Joseph's session is titled "Trash or Treasure? Gifts-in-Kind Practices Among New York State Libraries" and Rebecca's is titled "Testing and Tweaking Your Way to a Better Library Website: Improved User Experience without a Massive Site Overhaul".

Circulation Coordinator Katie Bram is one of this year's recipients of the Sylvia Chu Memorial Scholarship.

Cataloging, Metadata, and Systems Librarian Rebecca Hyams was elected to serve as 1st VP on the SUNYLA Executive Board, beginning after this year's conference. She also gave a lightning talk at the inaugural METRO User Experience SIG meeting on May 27th about the library's recent web usability study.

Head of Reference Gregory Murphy received a professional development grant from the campus UUP chapter to attend ALA this month in Las Vegas.

EDS (which we'll be calling Compass locally) is ready to launch and will be made live on our website later this summer along with some other website upgrades. We've also just put together a first batch of materials to put into the SUNY Digital Repository on DSpace.

Part-time Reference Librarian Michael Messina has left Maritime to take a full-time position with NYPL. We had a nice send-off party for him on his last day and wish him all the best in his new position across the Bronx.

Elsewhere on campus mostly everything is quiet except for some office and classroom renovations taking place elsewhere in Fort Schuyler. The Global Business and Trade department has finally been given the green light to move into the New Academic Building across campus. We're still waiting for a final announcement from the Chancellor about the choice for the next college president.

[Patrick Patterson]

SUNY Potsdam's new President Dr. Kristin Esterberg will be starting at the end of June.  During the summer the Crumb Library will be getting a new roof and the construction is expected to start during the month of July.

Several people for SUNY Potsdam will be giving presentations and teaching workshops a this years SUNY LA conference on a variety of different topics.  Here is an overview:

Glen Bogardus - Constructing a “Shared Services” Interlibrary Loan Department: A Narrative
Marianne  Hebert - One Bib to Rule Them All – SUNY One Bib / Shared Catalog Project
Elizabeth Andrews - Gathering Expertise: Designing a Library Orientation Game with Cross-Campus Partners
Abby Smith - Discover and Learn Together: a Review of the EDS Implementation Process
Patrick Patterson - workshop, Customizing EBSCO’s A to Z and LinkSource Products

[jenndevito]

Stony Brook University Libraries is currently recruiting for a number of positions:
     Associate Director for Library Information Technology
     Head of Health Sciences Library
     Head of Science and Engineering Library
     Biomedical and Translational Research Librarian - Senior Assistant Librarian/Associate Librarian
     Head of Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian- Senior Assistant Librarian/ Associate Librarian
     Head of Library Instruction - Senior Assistant Librarian/ Associate Librarian
     Supervising Programmer/Analyst
     Health Sciences Library - Clerk 1

The University Libraries will be implementing Ebsco Discovery System (EDS) and Ebsco eResource A-Z over the summer.

We have two new adjunct librarians – Elizabeth Trapasso and Sally Stieglitz.

[sparme]

We've added Marilia Antunez to our team, who's coming to us from Boise State, in the position of Research and Information Literacy Librarian (80 % Generalist, 20% STEM) and look forward to her arrival in late summer.

Construction is going on all over campus in preparation for Fredonia's new Science Building which will open this fall. To help celebrate the opening Bill Nye The Science Guy is coming to campus as the keynote speaker.

[Logan Rath]

Brockport has many presenters at this conference, be sure to check them out!

We've just hired Kristen Wallis as a Clerk 1. We have also recently named our archives The Rose Archives at The College at Brockport (http://www.brockport.edu/archives) in thanks to a major gift from donor Virginia Campbell. Additionally, we've created a new group - the Friends of Drake Library (http://library.brockport.edu/friends). This summer we're implementing Summon as well as upgrading LibGuides to version 2.

[Susanna]

Some campus renovations have begun, only indirectly effecting the Library/Baker Commons.  It's possible that student and classroom technology support services will move their offices, hardware storage and service window out of our area.  If so, we'll be working on adjusting our service model as well as gaining instruction space.

The campus will be implementing PaperCut this summer.  We're looking forward to improvements as well as greater stability.

We are in the third group of EDS, taking deep, calming breaths...

We will be hosting faculty and administrators, primarily from Colombia but also a group from Mali, in the College's Summer Intensive English Institute.  Participants are grouped according to initial English-language ability.  The Library works especially closely with people in the top proficiency who tend to be working on fairly substantial research projects.  The participants will be taking field trips to more specialized libraries in the area, too.

We're in beta for LibGuides 2.0.

The College's two programs in Culinary Arts and Sustainable Agriculture have been approved, new faculty have been hired and both planting and construction are under way from Farm to Bistro.  The restaurant, as well as classroom and meeting space, will be in downtown Ithaca.  The farm is adjacent to campus. It's possible that library materials that support the culinary arts and wine marketing classes will move to Ithaca, too, since that's where the classes are intended to be taught.  Many decisions to be made.

[Amanda Hollister]

We weeded!

We collected data on our monograph collection using the Aleph X-services and the WorldCat Search API.  The data was visualized using Tableau.  We determined that over half (OK, 74%) of our collection was published before 1980, and that those books only accounted for 8% of the overall loans.  Based on this data, we decided to weed books that were: older than our students, haven't left the shelf in 10 years, and are easily obtainable from IDS libraries.  So far we have weeded around 11,500 books.

The collection analysis had some interesting responses from the teaching faculty.  Some backed slowly away when shown the spreadsheets, but many helped the weeding process with wild abandon or careful deliberation ("How many other SUNYs have this edition?").

Once the dust and mold settles from weeding, we hope to purchase new shelving, and make the second floor of the library more student oriented (add some outlets?!?).

[SUNYCortland]

Hello Everyone,

There have been a lot of goings-on at SUNY Cortland. Gretchen Herrmann, our Social Sciences Librarian, and David Ritchie, Associate Librarian, both retired after 39 years of service. This year, we have hired two new Instructional Services Librarians, one Technical Services Librarian, and a new Information Literacy/Instruction Coordinator.

We have restructured our internal services, combining areas of Technology Help, Circulation, and Instructional Design Help into one unit known as The Help Center. On the more tech side, we have upgraded to Blackboard SP13 and switched our email services to MS Office 365. Finally, we are currently in the beta stage of our IDS implementation. Full implementation will occur beginning Fall semester.

Thank you,
Sara Quimby, SUNY Cortland Delegate