Campus Updates

[librarianofdoom]

Please add campus updates to this thread.

[jenndevito]

Stony Brook University Libraries welcome several new staff members to our ranks:
Dr. Robert Tolliver - Head of the Science and Engineering Library
Shafeek Fazal - Associate Director for Library Technology, Discovery and Digital Services
Jennifer Lyon - Biomedical & Translational Research Librarian
Matthew Still - Visiting Assistant Librarian

There are several library faculty and staff positions for which we are still hiring:
http://library.stonybrook.edu/about-us/employment/

On 22 October 2014, the Libraries hosted our third annual Scavenger Hunt.  http://library.stonybrook.edu/another-year-scavenger-hunt-success/

[Laura Evans]

This is my first campus update since I became delegate last spring, so I’ll try to summarize our news and be timelier with updates in the future.

Our former Dean of Libraries, John Meador, left Binghamton in July to become the inaugural Dean of Libraries at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Since then we have been under the care of our Interim Dean, Dr. Susannah Gal, former chair of the Biological Sciences department. Our provost has hired a search firm to jumpstart the search for a new Dean, and the position description has recently been advertised.

Over the summer we also welcomed our new Resource Sharing Coordinator, Melissa Perez, who comes to us from Georgia State. The Resource Sharing division is now under the supervision of Nancy Abashian, whose position of Head of Reader Services was expanded from a professional to a faculty position. Unfortunately, we also said good-bye to our Visual Arts librarian, Leslie Vega, who has moved to Florida.

At the beginning of the fall semester, the Libraries hosted a successful Welcome Weekend event for new students. You can see a short video about it here: http://library2.binghamton.edu/news/blog/2014/09/30/library-staff-welcome-new-students/

Juan Denzer, Ben Andrus, and Mien Wong have developed an exciting project, an augmented reality “Magic Book.” This Magic Book allows virtual content to be projected onto physical pages, and must be seen to be believed:  http://library2.binghamton.edu/news/armb/2014/10/28/ar-magic-book-trailer/

[Karen Ferington]

The library went live with EDS (Ebsco Discovery Service) in later summer 2014 and we are now teaching our students and faculty about the resources that result from searching with EDS and how to limit the results.

We are also working on several cleanup projects related to the SUNY OneBib Project and this work will continue into second semester.

A student focus group will be formed soon to review the library's webpage.  We'll ask these students to provide us with feedback as we plan for changes needed to make it easier for students and faculty to find the information that they are seeking.
 
We are part of a pilot project made up of mostly Western New York libraries that purchased the rights to over 4,000 e-books for a year.  Students from the participating colleges can download the books up to 7 times for free. When that book is accessed for the 7th time, the group purchases the title and it becomes part of the shared collection. The group decided at the onset that the pilot approach would be an emphasis on access instead of on ownership. So far this pilot has been very successful.

[Adam Saunders]

This semester one of Morrisville’s long standing circulation staff members retired. Nellie started as a part-time circulation clerk in September 2000. Nellie previously worked as a Library Clerk at the village of Hamilton Public Library. In 2008, after successfully completing the Library Clerk 2 Civil Service exam, she was reclassified from a Keyboard Specialist 1 to a Library Clerk 2 status. In 2009, Nellie became the fulltime, weekday circulation clerk.  She has always been a kind and nurturing presence at the circulation desk, genuinely interested in the students and helpful to faculty.

Morrisville was awarded the Sheila Johnson Grant. The purpose of the grant is to encourage the reading of and inform patrons about the diversity of literature available today. By making these titles available, the Library hoped to encourage reading among our patrons and provide them with a constructive activity for their free time within a diversity focused framework.

This semester we also implemented several changes to how students print in the library. For some background context students at Morrisville currently do not have a print balance and there have been no limitations on how much a student can print out. This has resulted in significant increase every year of how much gets printed, especially at the library where 80% of the printing on campus is conducted. To combat this we have implemented a 50 page limit per print job, reduced toner use per print, and implemented a login/release system. This login is now allowing us to retrieve data on who is printing and how much, vital information that we can present to campus. While these changes have already been active for a month we are already seeing print volumes decreasing by 20%.

Mustang weekend 2014 took place during the weekend of September the 27th. During this event the library presented yearbooks and other display materials for the class of 1964 alumni. We were also open to all visitors to the campus as an unwind location and hosted the MSC Gaming Guild for an afternoon of board gaming and fun.

A new standing exhibit is on display at the library. Titled Ways of the Woods: Perspectives on History this exhibit focuses on the history of conservation, industry, and lives of the people at Northern Forest, New Hampshire. It will be at the library for the remainder of the fall semester.

Several art displays were showcased in our gallery.
- September – Central New York Landscapes by Morrisville Grants Coordinator Lisa Iannello
- October – Art after Midnight by macabre artist Lee Brown Coye
- November – In the Time of Flood by instructor and artist Leigh Yardley

[Rebecca Hyams]

As Jennifer already posted, Shafeek Fazal is now at Stony Brook. He left Maritime at the end of October and we wish him all the best over there.

In the meantime, Greg Murphy has taken over as interim director while we do a search, which is already underway. The search is slated to run until 12/3. The job description and application information is available at:
https://interviewexchange.com/jobofferdetails.jsp?JOBID=54486

Shortly before Shafeek's departure (and Greg's subsequent appointment as interim director), Greg Murphy was promoted to Deputy Library Director (a role which he will resume when a new director is hired). Katie Bram was promoted into a faculty librarian line and is now our Acquisitions and User Services Librarian. Mona Ramonetti added collection development to her prevue and title, and Rebecca Hyams took on electronic resources and had her title changed to Cataloging and Digital Services Librarian.

This semester has been super busy, especially in terms of library instruction.  By the end of this week every section of both LEAD 101 (Freshman seminar) and English 101 will have been in the library, plus several sections of history, business, and engineering classes. We've also started serious revisions to our LibGuides after upgrading to 2.0 over the summer.

This past Friday the campus had a formal ribbon cutting ceremony for our Maritime Academic Center (formerly known as the New Academic Building) and a formal inauguration for our 11th President, Michael Alfultis, complete with bagpipes, pageantry, and a visit from the Chancellor. A few weeks ago we also had a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Bouchard simulator center on the other side of Ft. Schuyler. Plenty of good changes seem to be happening on campus!

[kathleenquinlivan]

A new Multimedia Creation Lab provides UB students with tools to create and edit videos, podcasts and other digital media projects. The Lab includes workspaces for digital editing, and the online reservation system makes it easy to borrow digital cameras, audio recorders, and other multimedia equipment.
http://library.buffalo.edu/multimedia/equipment/

The UB Libraries Stress Relief Days received the 2014 Western New York Library Resources Council Outstanding Library Program Award.  From the WNYLRC website:  “One of the possible guidelines for inclusion in this award is the ‘creation of a new or enhanced service model that can be emulated by other libraries…’ and Stress Relief Days has done just that.”

A new digital collection, Veterans and Armed Forces, features materials from the University Archives relating to the University at Buffalo, student veterans, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and efforts undertaken by the University in response to wars and conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Documentation includes photographs, manuscripts, posters and brochures chosen from various collections donated to the Archives by members of the Western New York and campus community, faculty, academic departments and the Office of the President.
http://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/LIB-UA019

Brian Detweiler was recently hired as the Law Library’s Student Services Librarian.  Brian has a JD from Notre Dame Law School and an MLS from UB's Library School. He has worked as an attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Rochester and, most recently, as the Faculty Services Librarian at St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio, TX.

Elliot McNally has joined the staff of the Poetry Collection as project archivist to catalog the editorial and business records of eleven little literary magazine archives. The project is funded by a $150,600 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

[AprilDavies]

The Van Wagenen Library will grace the cover of Choice in February 2015. The photo was taken by Systems Librarian Peter Barvoets. It is this image, although it is cropped differently, basically the center of the image with more sky above: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lookseeseen/9717492704. Turns out they liked the graininess of this one.

The search for a new campus president is nearly done. Five finalists visited campus last month, after which the College Council forwarded their recommendations on to Chancellor Zimpher. The big announcement should come out mid-January.

[maeichelberger]

Librarian Cindy Francis worked with the GCC Child Care Center and campus faculty and students to develop a new, expanded Children's Book Collection in response to frequent requests for children's books: http://www.genesee.edu/library/library-news/new-childrens-book-collection/

We're participating again this year in the A Tale for Three Counties one-book project.  The 2015 book will be announced in the library, and online, on Thursday, November 20.

One of our part-time Reference Librarians, Dan Lewandowski, is leaving us this month.  We'll be posting his position soon.

Our GCC Early History Collection is now live on New York Heritage: http://www.nyheritage.org/collections/gcc-history

The library's 4th Annual Photo Contest is wrapping up and judges will be selecting winners this week.  This year we had 92 entries from 35 students, our highest numbers yet.

Librarians Nicki Lerczak and Sarah Karas will be presenting 3 plagiarism workshops over the next few weeks in conjunction with Nicki's new online plagiarism resources: http://guides.genesee.edu/copyright/plagiarism

[mtimmons]

The MCC Libraries has been extra busy this semester with our gate count going up 8% registering some 76,200 people coming through our doors for September alone.  We've implemented a new online system for collecting query data and we saw those statistics jump 37%.  THE Form, as we call, collects information from all service points so no matter where service is provided data is captured.  It is hopping here.

The LeRoy V. Good Library is putting the final touches on a revamped bibliographic instruction classroom.  It has been equipped with new movable furniture, individual laptops and LCD monitors for group interactive work.  The DCC Learning Commons also upgraded its study rooms installing SmartBoards and LCD monitors to create more interactive spaces for our students.

We migrated to LibGuides Version 2 over the summer.  We are now refining the guides, developing a more organized structure to assist in finding specific subject and learning all the bells and whistle that comes with v.2.

The College's New Downtown Campus is coming along and we are slated to move in 2017.  Very exciting stuff happening around this.

The College also started its Middle States process this semester.  Has it really been 10 years since the last one?  Several members of the library staff are involved either on committees or serving as chairs. 

[verostek]

News from SUNY ESF by campus delegate - Jane Verostek - Associate Librarian - Moon Library - SUNY ESF


It was just announced that Moon Library received a “I2NY Library as Publisher Innovator Grant Awards” (Grants Supported by NY 3Rs Association, Inc.).
The NY 3Rs Association, Inc. is pleased to announce that two New York libraries have been awarded “I2NY Library as Publisher Innovator” grants -- the Fulton Public Library and the F. Franklin Moon Library at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Each will receive $5,000. The I2NY Work Group on Libraries as Publishers developed the grant process to highlight how libraries are no longer just content providers – they are publishers -- content creators -- as well.
Accessing Graduate Student Data Sets

The “Library as Publisher of Graduate Student Data” Project at the Moon Library at SUNY ESF, tackles a relatively new area of library publishing. Knowing that graduate students at Master and Doctoral levels generate many datasets that are all too often forgotten once the student leaves the institution, librarians at the Moon Library at SUNY ESF will work with students and the lab groups to curate the data and publish it on the institutional repository Digital Commons @ ESF  -- making it accessible not only to current but to future researchers. Reviewer Lippincott recognized the importance of this project. “Data publishing is one of the most promising and challenging areas for library publishing initiatives. It is still an emerging area and one that is poorly addressed by other publishers, making it an ideal subfield for library publishers. The check-list and procedures developed in this project could be used in other settings and could provide pathways for effectively collaborating with faculty and students in this critical area.” Steve Weiter, Director of College Libraries at SUNY ESF said, "We are excited to be able to provide a platform for publishing graduate student research and highlighting their contributions to the scholarship of the academic community."  Project leader and Senior Assistant Librarian Jessica Clemons concurred. “We want the library to be involved in data management and work with graduate students… The results of this grant will demonstrate to our faculty and the larger community that the library is an essential part of the entire research process. We want to thank the NY 3Rs Association for this incredible opportunity.”

Jane Verostek, Associate Librarian at Moon Library just presented at the NYLA Annual Conference. Her workshop was: Virtual Reference Services in the 21st Century - Explore how LibGuides, LibAnswers and LibAnalytics can move certain services into a completely paperless environment, offer detailed guidance 24/7 to your campus  community, re-energize traditional library services, improve outreach and at the same time, provide detailed statistics and reports to help with number crunching reference statistics and more!

Steve Weiter, Director of Libraries presented at the NYLA Annual Conference. His workshop was: Open Textbooks and Textbook Publishing Services - Textbook costs have skyrocketed and show no signs of slowing down. SUNY Geneseo is at the forefront of a new movement to create open textbooks to combat these costs.

Steve Weiter, Director of Libraries presented at Educause. His workshop was: Open Textbooks and Open SUNY Textbooks: Cooperative Strategies for Reducing the Cost of Textbooks - innovative solutions are needed to reduce the cost of higher education. The Open SUNY Textbook program, an IITG grant project, demonstrated that faculty and libraries can publish high-quality open textbooks. In the connected age, libraries are poised to support faculty in the transformation of teaching and learning by providing publishing services.

[millerjaACC]

Michele Gottlieb has joined the staff of the SUNY Adirondack Library as a part-time reference librarian. She is a University of Albany graduate of the School of Information Science. In addition, she is an adjunct professor at the College of Saint Joseph in Rutland, Vermont, where she has taught Spanish, French, Introduction to Literature, Speech and Fundamentals in English. She also has experience in teaching middle school and high school students.

The Fall 2014 semester has seen more than 90 classes visiting for research sessions led by a librarian. Enrollment is going well at the Branch Campus in Wilton (north of Saratoga Springs), so we also offer library research sessions in Wilton. 

[matthewbest]

Erie Community College Library Resource Center congratulates librarians Joyce Ampuja, Katherine Hill, and Lynnette Mende on their retirements in the 2014 summer. We are grateful for their years of dedicated service to the Erie Community College community. Fall 2014 brought personnel changes throughout our libraries. College Librarians Jewel De la Rosa, Jamie Smith, Kim Coney, Kelly Waller, and Senior Library Clerk Paula Gilbert joined us at our North Campus. College Librarians Ryan Grimmer and Maria Lowe joined us at our City Campus. College Librarian David Odum joined us at our South Campus.

[Patrick Patterson]

Here are the main things that have been going on at SUNY Potsdam recently:

At the end of October Joe Certeski from EBSCO travelled to Potsdam to talk about their new products Full Text Finder and Publication Finder.  These products will be replacing LinkSource and A to Z.  The new Publication Finder will be integrated into the Discovery Service.  In attendance where people from Potsdam, Canton, Jefferson Community College.

This week we are winding down Library Quest which was created to introduce students to both the Crumb Library and resources available through the college libraries.  The students who take FYS 100 all participate in the Quest, which is 26 classes this year.  Each week starting in late September three or four classes each week are doing the Library Quest.  After students complete it they take a quiz in the Learning Management Tool (Moodle), so we can access how much information they have learned.

[Christine Faraday]

Nassau Community College-
After piloting it for several semesters, NCC Library officially implemented the Papercut print management system this semester. This system helps encourage responsible printing practices. Students are granted a non-refundable print quota of $15 at the start of each semester for printing in the library and other open computer labs on campus. If students exceed this quota, they can purchase additional printing capacity by using one of several kiosks to add money to their account.