ALA Award Winners

gpc award winners!
Originally uploaded by dwfree1967.

This is pretty late news, even by off-line standards, but congrats to Lois, Eva and Sherry on their award for the Library CSI Orientation program. Very cool! They received the award at ALA in New Orleans last month. Thanks to Amy (or Pete) for the photo as I wasn't able to make it to the awards breakfast.

I was able to make it to dinner every night, and here are the photos to prove it.

I have lots more ALA/ New Orleans photos on my Flickr site and more info about the conference on my blog too if anyone is still interested in month old conference news! :)

Electronic Resources @ Georgia Perimeter College

Just wanted to let everyone know that our new databases have been set up in EZproxy and linked from the website. I've tested them from my office and Kathy and I have tested them from home, so we think we're set. If you see any problems, please drop me a line.

When checking the links, I noticed that the coverage dates for the ProQuest Historical Newspapers had changed and I have edited them accordingly. This wasn't one of the pages I took care of in the past, so I don't know how often this coverage expands, but I'm figuring it's fairly regularly. If everyone could be an extra set of eyes for me, and give me a heads-up about changes, I'd appreciate it.

DeKalb Tech Status

As many of you know, DeKalb Tech is opening their own Learning Resource Center on their Clarkston campus in Building A, Room 141. As always, DT students are welcome to use our library, including reference services, the collection and the public computers, but as of June 30, 2006 they are no longer able to check out materials. [Vocational schools are not part of the USG system, so their students can't check out materials through GIL Express.]

The phone number which we've been given: 404.297.9522 x1140 rings at someone else's office and although the library was scheduled to open on Monday July 10, it has not opened yet. We haven't received any additional information from library staff at DeKalb Tech. Until their library opens, any DeKalb Tech student or faculty needing further assistance should be referred to DT's administrative offices at 404.297.9522.

GPC Ad Hoc Website Review Committee

Some of you may have heard that Interim President Watts recently formed an ad hoc committee to begin a website review process. Eva was gracious enough to get me on this committee and I just wanted to give you a brief overview of our work. This committee was not in charge of actually redesigning the webpage, only of making recommendations for the process. However, during the course of our meetings, we saw several examples of what the new GPC homepage could look like. I was iffy about some of the color choices, but that’s not carved in stone, and the designs themselves were very clean and professional. I'm pleased to say that the Libraries featured prominently in the main links in each of these mock-ups.

The committee began meeting on March 30, 2006. I was unable to attend the first two meetings due to prior commitments, but David Free went in my place. (Thanks, David!). The committee was charged by the Interim President to make recommendations to address the following directives:

• Ensure that GPC’s mission and goals are served by its website


• Promote coordination, consistency and cohesiveness throughout the website


• Recommend revisions or updates to the GPC web policy


• Recommend major design, content, or structural changes to GPC’s main web page and those linked directly to it


• Recommend design standards for deeper levels of GPC web pages or sites


• Provide recommendations on web-related issues or disputes

Our 17-page report was presented to Interim President Watts on July 3, 2006. The report contained ten recommendations for conducting the website redesign. On the redesign itself, the framework will be the same as ours, a college “gateway” serving as a door to individual department and/or campus pages.

Of course, there is a lot more detail than this and I’ll be happy to discuss it with anyone who is interested.