Showing posts with label procedure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label procedure. Show all posts

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Day 13, Hour 65

Sorry if you've missed me; I worked from home on the collection development policy on Tuesday. It is going quite well, and I hope it will be helpful for both my Selection and Acquisitions class and the Rock Hall Library.

I have a pretty good policy and procedure survey drafted, and Andy agrees that it will be quite helpful. He provided me with an amazing list of contacts to present the survey to, and hopefully they will be generous enough with their time to participate. I have drafted an email to send out along with the survey and have submitted it to Andy for comments and suggestions. I'm not entirely sure why, but it makes me a little nervous to be sending out a survey to such important professionals!

I have also been continuing with collection development, and have gathered books and videos representing all of the inductees from 1986 and 1987. I am anxious to keep working on this, and would like to hopefully finish another 3-5 years of inductions before my time is up here. Thankfully, the inductees list grows shorter as the years progress; I may be able to finish more than I think I can.

Coming up next: I will hopefully be sending out the survey within the next couple of days or so. I do not want to wait until next week as I want to be sure to compile and review the results very soon. On a side note, if you or someone you know has any comments or suggestions on library policy or would like to participate in the survey, please contact me through this blog. I would graciously accept any input you can offer!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Day 4, Hour 20

I focused today on more research, as I am hoping to give Andy a rough outline of policy and procedure by the end of next week. I am finding more and more that there are many research libraries that do not lend their materials; most of the repositories that do circulate materials only do so for faculty, staff, and doctoral or graduate students for the purpose of completing a research project. In light of this information, I do not think it is unreasonable to say that the materials here in the Rock Hall Library will not circulate.

I have considered the idea of allowing faculty to check out materials, but there is a slim chance this would work. First, we would have to determine if only Tri-C faculty would qualify or if we would include faculty from other colleges. There is also the issue of policy, and how well it is implemented and adhered to. I found a case study today in Library Journal titled "Faculty Borrowing Privileges" in which a university branch library director was faced with the problem of the university's faculty abusing borrowing privileges. She had a difficult time convincing the Director of Libraries that this was a problem; this director was more concerned with maintaining a good working relationship with the faculty, and feared that reprimanding them would only cause problems and subject the librarians to unfair judgment. Nancy R. John, in her response to the case study, wisely stated that "few library policies are as open to emotional attack as those concerned with borrowing privileges." Perhaps the best policy will be to not let items circulate at all, regardless of the patron's status.

Many libraries, like The Getty Research Institute Library, have differing levels of users that maintain differing privileges based on what each level permits. A high level, for example, may allow the user a wider array of browsing materials and extended hours in the library; a lower level patron may be restricted to a certain area. A great number of these libraries, however, are vast institutions with many different collections, and some collections cannot even be browsed, but require a request for materials that would later be supplied for use for a short period of time. The Rock Hall Library will contain both a browsable collection and non-browsable archives. It would not make sense to limit the browsing of the open stacks collection, since it is in the open in one large room, but perhaps the paging of items in the archives could be limited to those with a higher library status.

Coming up next: As you can see, I still have a lot of research and work to do regarding creating a working policy and procedure. I should mention that I also began compiling a survey to send to various research and academic libraries, so that we can get an idea of how their institutions operate. This will all continue into next week, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Day 2, Hour 10

It is Day 2 of my practicum at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library, and I did some great research and other basic work toward my end experience.

I started today by creating a working list of notes, which is really just a collection of questions I come up with as I think about what the user experience will look like from start to finish. Today, I was mostly considering membership and who that would be extended to. For instance, Andy and I discussed that students would be able to use the library, and I was assuming he meant Tri-C students, since the library is on their campus. However, I was thinking that membership should be extended to all Northeast Ohio college students. Could we also include other regional college and high school students, faculty, and staff?

This is not to say that the library will not be open to the public, which it will. However, there is a question of membership and whether or not the library will charge for it. I think a good policy would be to offer membership for free or at a discounted rate for students, faculty, and staff of regional institutions. This would allow for the fostering of great research skills in an interesting and important subject field.

I also began researching information on libraries that allow for lending of materials to patrons on-site, but do not all borrowing off-site. It seems as though this is the policy for many academic research libraries, and for university libraries who allow "unaffiliated users" to utilize their facilities (in many universities, unaffiliated users--such as those who do not fall into the category of students, faculty, or staff--are allowed to utilize materials in the library but cannot check them out). I gathered citations and abstracts from several articles that expound on this subject, and I have begun to analyze the information to come up with a policy on lending for the Rock Hall Library.

Lastly, I created a wiki that I will share with my practicum supervisors and advisor that will contain pertinent information about the work I complete this semester. I made a calendar with dates of deadlines and created spaces to publish my notes and research bibliographies, and a place to keep track of my practicum hours, as well. All in all, I feel like I accomplished quite a bit today!

Coming up next: I will continue to work on my wishlist for inductees next Tuesday. I am finding that through my research for that, I am able to add some titles to my DVD wishlist, as well. Sometimes going off on a tangent can be a good thing!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura