Annual Report 2012-2013: Director's Corner

Ann Dixon

Contact:adixon@harding.edu
501-279-4354

Liaison to Education, Children's Literature, Biology, Math, General, and Library Science

Launa Bookwalter

Contact:

Brackett Library was honored with a Distinguished Christian Servant Award at the 2012 Harding University Lectureship for the creation of a digital collection of Jim Bill McInteer’s sermon outlines and notes.  A 1942 graduate of Harding College, he preached from the time he was 18 years old until his death at the age of 88 in 2010. Famous for never repeating a sermon during his 30 years at the West End church in Nashville, Tenn., Brother McInteer kept meticulous records. Following his death, Brother McInteer's family donated this priceless collection to Harding University. The staff of Brackett Library continues to work to digitize this material making it available to a much wider audience.

EBSCO's Discovery Service, commonly called "PowerSearch" was launched at the beginning of the school year.  This tool pulls into a single index the library's local collection, both physical and digital, and 85% or more of the licensed database collection.  The single search portal allows patrons to more easily broaden their research while maintaining easy access to all the full text content the library has to offer.  There has been positive feedback on the user-friendliness of this tool and the aid it provided to research methods.

In January some changes were made in the reporting structure and the Interlibrary Loan Assistant moved to an office near the circulation desk and shared in the responsibilities for public service.  During the spring semester other plans were made to restructure the entire Public Service area and three librarians prepared to physically move their offices and assume new roles in the library.  The moves were made in May at the end of the regular school year.

The reclassification project from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress Classification System continued with a record 13,766 books reclassified and reshelved.  This project includes a major shifting of the collection.

The 2013-2013 academic year was a landmark year for the library’s Instruction Department.  The expansion of the university’s Allied Health areas and increased collaboration with both the College of Bible and Religion and the Department of Communication led to a 22% increase in the number of students receiving Information Instruction in a classroom setting.  The majority of the increase came from meetings with Pharmacy, Physician Assistant, and Physical Therapy classes.  Because Brackett Library does not have a dedicated Health Sciences Librarian, E-Resources Librarian Jean Waldrop served as the liaison for these areas and provided excellent service and research assistance.

Brackett Library continues to be a busy place. The gate registered a count of 383,900 visitors for the year.  In the spring semester, 4,027 unique users logged into library computers 71,212 times. LabStats reported that the average duration of a log in at the library was approximately 34 minutes.  To compare, logins for the other 9 public computer labs combined reported 9,592 fewer logins. 

With the continued growth of the student body, the library has been called upon to serve an ever increasing number of students without an increase in the number of librarians and staff.  Two concerns that must be addressed are the size of the building and the number of librarians per student. The last additional librarian position was added in 1997-1998 when the FTE of the student body was 3733.  The FTE for the 2012-2013 school year was 5649.

For the first time in several years, the librarian's responsibilities remained the same. However, several staff positions changed during the year:

• Technical Services:   Rachel Gibbs, who worked in the library as a student worker and later as full-time staff retired after 29 years of service to the library. Megan Hasler became the Technical Services Assistant in July. 
• Circulation:   Lisa Wagar, who had also transitioned from a student worker role to Circulation Assistant, moved to Nashville. Jennifer Hodges accepted the responsibility of that role in June.  However, in March, she moved to Texas and Jennifer Dillavou became the Circulation Assistant.
• Reference services:   After several years as Information Services Assistant, Katie Holmes accepted a position in the Alpha Chi office in February.  Whitney Hammes was hired for that position. 

Debbie Anderson

Contact:

501-279-4262

danderson@harding.edu

Gate Count                383,900        

Public printing          2,511,672

Items Circulated           57,818

Total Reserve Items       8,003

Databases available         141

Unique E-Resources   75,270

Student Worker Hours 12,282