GPC Award Winners!

Just saw this interesting tidbit in my email: Eva, Sherry and Lois have been chosen to receive the 2006 CJCLS/EBSCO Community College Learning Resources Program Achievement Award for their work on the CSI: Information Literacy orientation.

"This unique orientation, initiated by the librarians and coordinated with the Joint Enrollment and Student Services Offices, is an outstanding example of creative, involved, professional librarians who stay focused on students and contribute to the overall mission of their institution," said award committee chair Alice Lubrecht.

That is awesome! Way to go folks!

LCSH Changes: Lighting Strikes Twice

I'm giddy with happiness. Somebody pinch me.

At the request of an AUTOCAT subscriber (go AUTOCAT!), the authority record for the PATRIOT Act (i.e. the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001) now has an eminently sensible cross-reference from " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Everyone squeal with me. “Yipeee!”

I just overlaid the new authority record in GPC and GGC and you've got to see it in action. Go to the OPAC and do an exact subject search for "patriot act". Now click on the grey "See Also" oval next to " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Now click on that crazy long PATRIOT Act heading and voila, our books on the PATRIOT Act!

Of course, none of the cross-references were capitalized (“PATRIOT” is an acronym), but that’s a pretty common mistake with this act, and we can’t have everything. I couldn’t find a rule expressly forbidding capitalization in this instance, so I just went ahead and did it myself. Future updates through MARCIVE may overlay my changes and revert to the lack of capitalization, but the lovely lovely cross-reference will remain.

I also skimmed the database to make sure that this subject heading is applied to everything that it could be. I’m not usually a big advocate of the keyword search, but this is actually a very good candidate for it. A keyword search for “PATRIOT Act” as a phrase will pull up a several titles that have an essay or two on the act, but not enough information to merit the subject heading itself.

Ahhh, I love it when an authority record comes together.

LCSH Changes: Ooo! These Are Good!

I'm very excited about this change from LCSH Weekly List #29 and mortified that I didn't catch it sooner.

The rather un-user-friendly headings of Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test have been cancelled in favor of the much more logical SAT (Educational test).

It appears that the PSAT has followed suite, with PSAT (Educational test) replacing Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test and Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test.

I hope that you are all as thrilled as I am about a heading change that is much more useful than making Treasure-trove plural. I've just finished correcting all of the headings in our catalog, but a lot of it had to be done by hand, so let me know if you see something wonky.

Classifying A Million Little Pieces

Some folks on AUTOCAT had a little discussion recently about whether or not to reclassify James Frey's A Million Little Pieces from non-fiction to fiction and I was wondering if anyone here has an opinion about it.

We have a couple of copies, and they seem pretty popular, but I'm loathe to reclass them. We classify works objectively, describing them as the authors present them. Rethinking that is a very slippery slope. If we reclass this title, there are plenty more to bring into question, 'cause, let's face it, memoirs and autobiographies just aren't always the most honest and accurate things on the shelves. Then, what do we do with other non-fiction works that ostensibly present false information? In my opinion, we have a lot more productive things to do with our time than opening this particular can of worms.

I am, however, considering editing the 520 (summary note) to reflect recent developments re. the title's "truthiness".

What do y'all think?

[Update 2.14.06: I've changed the summary note a bit, and added a link to Frey's "note to the reader" in which he addresses the fabrications. I figure that that's sufficient for our purposes. Take a peek and tell me what you think.]

Database Trials Page

John has added some info to the database trials page. A couple of the trials for products we discussed at the last reference meeting are already active. He'll keep adding new ones as he gets them set up.

Not sure we should link to the page in a technically open forum since it has passwords and such but the link is the same as last years page. Someone should know it on each campus for the newbies.

GALILEO Quick Search

Has anyone played around with the new GALILEO interface which is currently in demo mode? GALILEO Quick Search incorporates WebFeat's federated search, allowing you to search multiple databases in a single search box. So far the feedback I've heard from UGA librarians is that they want the general topic search be limited to a single multi-subject journal databases, like Academic Search Premier rather than including several databases and an encyclopedia as it currently does. If left the way it currently is, the new interface will certainly change the way we teach GALILEO. Comments?

"Web Sites Judge in a Blink"

Interesting Reuters article about the time it takes someone to respond favorably or negatively to a web site.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/01/17/canada.websites.reut/index.html

Changes to Oversized Book Processing Procedures

I just wanted to alert you to a change in our processing procedures for oversized books. Beginning immediately, we are no longer adding a lowercase "q" to the handwritten call number on the verso or to the call number label.

After checking extensively with the campuses, we discovered that this "q" is not frequently used as a shelving device, and often overlooked entirely. Most of the campuses use spine labels to identify their oversized books. Therefore, the “q” is an unnecessary step in our procedures and has been eliminated. Call numbers for oversized books will now be handled in exactly the same way as those for any other monographs.

So this:

PQ1248
q.K32
2002

Will become this:

PQ1248
.K32
2002

The permanent location will not be affected by this revision of procedure. Oversized books will still be assigned to the appropriate oversize location for each campus.

Thanks everybody! Please share this information with anyone it may affect and let me know if you have any questions.

Database Evaluation Form

Take a look at the database evaluation form we used last year and let John Lassiter know if you have suggestions for changes. We'll post the link to the db evaluation page when the trials for this year get set up.

Reference Committee Minutes and Agenda

The minutes from the previous Reference Committee meeting and the agenda for tomorrow's meeting are available on the committee website. Meeting tomorrow (1/19) from 10-12 in the JCLRC Library Instruction room on the Clarkston Campus.

BBC NEWS | UK | Librarians 'suffer most stress'

Good article to show folks when they say "it must be nice to get to read all day!". From Library Link of the Day.

Changing A Cultural Icon

The Distant Librarian today pointed out an interesting article from Educause called "Changing A Cultural Icon: The Academic Library As Virtual Destination" by Jerry D. Campbell. Campbell, who is library dean at UCLA, talks about how libraries have primarily become a virtual destination for most users and discusses issues such as use of physical space, virtual reference, and information literacy instruction.

Another item of interested from DL today: a note about a Kept Up Academic Librarian post on an Educause series called "7 Things You Should Know About..." different emerging learning techniologies. The series includes blogs, IM, collabotative editing, social bookmarking etc. How's that for some metablogging?

Happy weekend!

OCLC Acquires the Assets of Openly Informatics

Whew! Say that five times fast.

Openly Informatics' database will be used to enhanced WorldCat and vice versa. For more details, see the OCLC news release.

LCSH Changes: A Mixed Bag

With Voyager down, I have a little time to tend to the drifts of papers on my desk, filling things, trashing things, putting things in completely different piles. Very satisfying. In this excavation, I unearthed the last couple of issues of the Cataloging Service Bulletin, which have been shamefully languishing on my desk, and I thought I’d let you all know about a few changes that might be of interest in our catalog.

[Old Heading ==> New Heading]

Breast feeding ==> Breastfeeding

Restitution and indemnification claims (1933- ) ==> [Headings for individual ethnic groups]—Claims

Restitution and indemnification claims (1933- ) ==> Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Reparations

Restitution and indemnification claims (1933- ) ==> World War, 1939-1945--Claims

Restitution and indemnification claims (1933- ) ==> World War, 1939-1945--Reparations

Treasure-trove ==> Treasure troves

I haven’t gotten to all these yet, so you may see the older forms still lurking around GIL until Voyager comes back up.

How Does Google Rank Results?

This is the sole article from the first edition of the Google Librarian Newsletter. It's probably well worth a read, and I intend to get to it sometime soon.

Trial Databases

At the Reference Committee Meeting on November 28 we began the process of selecting database for the upcoming year. The first step is to select databases for consideration.
Here's the timeline:
January 19 - The Committee will finalize the trial database list.
February 1 - We need to have a list of databases to John Lassiter to give him time to set up trials during the Spring.
April 1 – The database list will be ready to submit to the library directors
July? 2006 – New databases will be made available

The committee will meet in January to finalize the list of databases for which we want trials.
The following is a list of databases suggested at our November meeting. Please, look over this list, make comments and add databases you would like the committee to consider at our January 19th meeting. Reminder: Last year the Committee decided to focus on a science database this year.

Suggested databases:

African American Experience (new Spring 2006) – Greenwood Press

Artstor.org – www.artstor.org digital art images, from the same folks who brought us JSTOR

Daily Life Through History – http://dailylife.greenwood.com We looked at this product last year, but the publisher changed the price after we decided we wanted to purchase.

Choice Reviews online - http://www.choicereviews.org/rev190choicescripts/

Classical Music Library (GUC purchased this database) http://www.alexanderstreet.com/products/clmu.htm

Europa Yearbook -http://www.europaworld.com/pub/

Historical Abstracts on the Web (ABC-Clio) - http://www.abc-clio.com/products/overview.aspx?productid=109712&viewid=0&fromhistorydb=1&from=academic

Library Literature & Information Science Full Text – (online version of Library Literature, a Wilson index) – http://www.hwwilson.com/databases/liblit.htm
requested by Dunwoody to supplement the new LIST program

Reference Suite – Facts on File - http://www.facts.com/facts-db-ref.htm
Includes: Issues and Controversies, Today’s Science and World Almanac

Scopus – http://www.scopus.com/scopus/home.url RACL (Regents Academic Committee on Libraries) is conducting a year long trial of this Elsevier product. John will investigate whether GPC can participate.

World Cultures Today – Greenwood Press - http://dailylife.greenwood.com

Journal: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica - Dec 15, 2005

Cnn.com points out an interesting article in the current edition of Nature on the accuracy of Wikipedia. The study found that there was not a great difference in the accuracy of science articles between the two sources.

As of today, the article is available free on the Nature website.

GALILEO Database Trials

Everybody has probably already seen this, but the folks at GALILEO have some database trials set up. There are a couple of interesting ones there now and looks like they will update the page when they add new trials. Apparently you have to request a user name and password to access the trials.

The trials page is available at:
http://www.usg.edu/galileo/help/library/trials.phtml

Holiday Party Location Change

The holiday party mentioned in the previous post will now be held in room 4190 of the JCLRC instead of on the third floor. If you come to the 3rd floor you will be lonely, hungry and gift-less!

Hope to see as many as possible on Monday!

Holiday Party Reminder

Don't forget, the holiday party is just around the corner! See your campus rep for tickets, which are on sale for $12.00. We'd love to see you all there.

Whether or not you can make it to the party, please still consider making a donation to this year's charity, the American Library Association Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund. Your campus rep can accept cash donations or checks made payable to "ALA" and marked for "ALA Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund". Funds collected will be applied to restoring and rebuilding devastated libraries in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. We all know how important libraries are to a community, and these communities need all the help they can get right now, so anything you can spare will be much appreciated. Thanks everybody!