First, the definition of the question took some untangling. Does this mean current subscriptions? Does it mean individual subscriptions that we choose specifically to receive, or does it count the titles we receive as part of “big deals” from vendors like Elsevier? Does it mean stuff we pay cold hard cash for, or does it include freebies, such as the 4000+ open access journals that are readily accessible on the web (and which are all included in the library catalog)? Or does it mean just the print stuff we receive in hard copy?

After some hemming & hawing, I decided the most interesting questions were: 1) how many journal titles do we have access to altogether, both current & ceased? and 2) how many journal titles do we currently subscribe to, regardless of format, regardless of cost?

With help from the cataloging, acquisitions, and serials departments, I discovered that:
1) we currently have access to an astounding total of approximately 42,443 journal titles; and
2) of these, approximately 38,000 are current.

Furthermore, about 5,100+ are print titles (current & ceased) and we have free web access to about 4,300+ titles from the Directory of Open Access. Catalog records for all of these titles are in MIDCAT.

This is an incredible resource for our students and faculty (and staff!), and many thanks to all the people — acquisitions & collection development folks, catalogers, systems people, infrastructure people, librarian liaisons & selectors, etc. etc. — who have worked hard over the years to make this possible. And this is just one small part of the many many many services LIS provides. Really amazing.

        Horace Ward Bailey was a native Vermonter who served the state in many capacities, from state Senator and U. S. Marshall to State Railroad Commissioner and member of the Champlain Tercentenary Commission, but he may well be best remembered for his collection of Vermont pamphlets, which “was one of the most complete in the country and included some of the rarest known specimens of the early days of the history of the State,” according to a memorial volume written by his friends. 

          After Mr. Bailey’s death in 1914, his collection of Vermont pamphlets was purchased from his estate for the library at Middlebury College.  For many decades this collection of 130 bound volumes of pamphlets had a paper index, but was otherwise uncataloged and unused. Thanks to a recently completed ten-year project by the Catalog Department, the pamphlets have been cataloged, and the most unique and interesting pamphlets are being digitized as well.

          The earliest pamphlet in the collection dates back to 1794 and other pamphlets date from the very early 1800’s to Bailey’s death in 1914 and cover a broad range of topics, from town histories to railroad annual reports and a report on the Dred Scott decision on slavery.  As we celebrate the quadricentennial of the discovery of Lake Champlain by Samuel de Champlain in 1609, it is worth noting that there is an extensive collection of materials on the Lake Champlain and Hudson River Tercentenary among the Bailey Pamphlets.

          All of the cataloged pamphlets (well over 900) can be found in Midcat by doing a title search on Bailey’s Collection of Vermont Pamphlets.  The pamphlets are shelved in the locked portion of the Vermont Collection, which is in Special Collections.

          Many thanks go to the staff of the Catalog Department for their hard work and tenacity in completing this ambitious project.

If we don’t have a book you want, we can get it for you quickly.  Through Interlibrary Loan, Middlebury College students, faculty, and staff can use books, journal articles, and other research materials owned by libraries across the country.  Here’s how to make an interlibrary loan request:

1)   Search for the item in the NExpress catalog (shortcut:  http://go.middlebury.edu/nexpress).  If you find the item there, click on the “Request” link and fill out the form.  Books should be delivered to the Main Library within a week, articles should be delivered to your email inbox within a few days.

2)    If your item is not available in NExpress, fill out the Illiad form (shortcut:  http://go.middlebury.edu/ill).  Books and articles should be delivered to the Main Library within a few weeks.

Tips:

• In MIDCAT and other databases, look for the blue “NExpress” button.   It’s a shortcut that searches NExpress for you.

• In FirstSearch databases such as WorldCat, MLA and PsycInfo, try the button first.  If Middlebury does not own the item then you can request it from NExpress or traditional Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad).

• Always try to order from NExpress first. Article requests that cannot be filled by NExpress are automatically forwarded to ILLiad for ILL processing.

Terry
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Present: Terry Simpkins (notes), Joseph Watson, Joy Pile, Michele McHugh, Rachel Manning, Bill Warren, Dan Frostman, Abbie Bennett (phone), Alma Garcia (phone)

Positives

The information (segue) page for Middlebury at Mills was helpful – Mills linked to it from their catalog page. Mills folks wondered if there was a need to password-protect it in case there was any sensitive information on the site.

The process of shipping books to California and emailing the MARC records to Alma generally worked well. Mills placed colored “Middlebury at Mills” stickers on the spines of the language materials sent to them, in part to help their staff recognize these materials.

ILL requests were generally processed and received quickly.

The program as a whole seemed to go reasonably smoothly

Room for improvement

There were a couple of minor errors with the items/MARC records we sent that Mills caught and corrected on their end. E.g. missing locations (on some reference items); some of the items we sent had our Browsing call no. in the record, not an LC number.

The Spanish collection was rather modest – we should consider beefing up for next year.

Middlebury acquisitions noted that the process of purchasing materials for the Middlebury at Mills program via using money from the Language School budget and specifying a variety of fund codes (vs. having additional money transferred into the LIS budget) was burdensome and inefficient. For next summer, they advocate strongly for simply transferring money to the LIS budget, and LIS can provide any reports and information the Language School program might desire for tracking purposes.

Some of the URLs in the student handbook for off-campus access to resources differ from the on-campus URLs. This was noted at the beginning of the handbook, but the examples throughout the handbook tended to use the on-campus URL. We should review these and make sure the links are not misleading to students.

Mills mentioned a few problems after registration in seeing available classes.

Mills noted that a handful of faculty (primarily in the French program) were not included in the Banner feed, which required adding them into the library system on the fly. Dan noted this also happened here.

Mills noted that there were some student concerns about the Mills library hours. They will review their staffing needs/abilities before next summer, with an eye toward possibly extending hours somewhat. The only pay copier is in the library, which contributed to the demand for evening access to the library.

Mills noted a few patrons had difficulty generating requests for items held by Middlebury. They will send more details when Michael (Mills) is back from vacation. We need to review and possibly revise this process before next summer.

Open questions

Will the student handbook be printed again next year, or just online?

ILL received ca. 20 total requests from ca. 6 patrons, although a couple patrons did not pick up their requested items – perhaps a result of the accelerated class schedule of the Language Schools.

We have asked Mills for circulation statistics for the Middlebury at Mills materials we sent, and also any issues that come to light once the evaluations have been reviewed.

The URLs for the various sites I mentioned are clickable from within the presentation itself.  Please feel free to let me know if you encounter problems or would just like to talk about cool music sites (or cool music).

Terry

PS – if you have a favorite “free, legal” music site to add, why not post a comment?

Periodicals Archive Online Collection Extensions.
PAO is an archive of hundreds of digitized, full-image articles published in journals of the arts, humanities and social sciences, providing access to more than 200 years of scholarship. Earliest PAO journals begin in 1802; we advanced coverage of this collection by five years, from 1995 to 2000.
Link: http://biblio.middlebury.edu/record=b2117470~S2

Oxford Encyclopedia of Popular Music Online. The 10-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music is a comprehensive reference work devoted exclusively to popular music. In addition to being regularly updated, it will also be fully cross-searchable with Grove Music Online in the new Oxford Music Online gateway.
Link: http://biblio.middlebury.edu/record=b1569964~S2

Godey’s Lady’s Book Folios. Godey’s Lady’s Book, a 19th century magazine for women, was the most successful women’s magazine in the United States by the outbreak of the Civil War, with a circulation of 150,000 and an estimated readership of a million persons. We acquired folios VII (1886-1889) and VIII (1892, 1893, 1896) to complete the run of this publication.
Link: http://biblio.middlebury.edu/record=b2129257~S2

–Joe Toth

By obligation, the Library collects information resources to support the curricular needs of the College’s academic departments. We strive to provide relevant materials for established programs and to assemble, to the extent possible, retrospective core collections for new College-sponsored academic initiatives. Collection subjects reflect the undergraduate curriculum, and collection developers are informed by class enrollments, intensity of use, new course offerings, and areas of study which must be supported by strong local holdings.

The primary way we build subject collections is by acquiring materials we think will be used by those teaching and taking courses presently offered by the College. This process is a year-by-year layering of new course materials upon older ones, perhaps best described as follows: in year one, professor X (in addition to her textbook order) submits requests to the library for books that augment required readings for a course she is currently teaching; in year two, professor X submits requests for additional books that further augment readings for this same course. Over the years, as X continues to teach this course, the library steadily shapes a collection around this curricular subject. We try to avoid the opposite approach, to expend large sums of money on a single course all at once, because creating an “opening day” collection means significantly reducing acquisitions in other subjects, and because by having sustained curricular activity drive collecting levels, we’re advancing collections incrementally according to needs of students and teachers.

–Joe Toth

Here’s an illustration of some of the benefits of our new Bookeye scanner and BSCAN software.  With this software ILL staff will now be able to scan two very large pages at one time–with the BSCAN splitting them into two distinct, reasonably sized images.  The program automatically corrects errors, smoothes the curvature of the book, straightens crooked pages, and even removes fingers from the image. With the addition of cover sheet recognition, automatic updating and color imaging, this new setup will streamline the ILL scanning process and permit readers to read more easily.

In case you were wondering what all those little orange flags are that are peeking out of many volumes in the Bound Periodicals section on the lower level in the Main Library—fret no more!

Collection Management staff and the Collection Development Librarian, in concert with the Liaisons, have done a major review of  our periodical collections, with a focus on withdrawing most titles to which we have online access.  These journals, primarily available online via our JSTOR, Project MUSE and PAO collections, are being withdrawn and removed from the collection. And, the orange flags indicate which sets of volumes will be withdrawn as the project progresses.

Begun last spring, we are now about 25 % of the way through pulling JSTOR titles—which represent the largest portion of the project. It is time consuming as many different records for each title involved have to be edited to assure consistency (in MIDCAT: bib, item, and serial-holding records are changed, and in WorldCat holdings records are updated as well.) One important thing to note: Currently, our local holdings, on the A to Z List are becoming more and more out of sync with what is in the collection—that is because it is impossible to update it as we move along. (Electronic Assess does remain current!) A more up-to-date list of local holdings will be generated before the Fall term commences.

Electronic access has proven to be more convenient for both student and faculty researchers, and removing the bound volumes from the shelves provides the library with more flexibility as to how the library space is organized.  We expect that this will free up significant space—at latest count, close to 700 shelves will be emptied—allowing for significant consolidation of the Bound Periodicals collection.  Titles of particular historic value (e.g., those with important illustrations) will be retained and transferred into Special Collections. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Joe Toth or Terry Simpkins.

Middlebury now participates in the VCAL reciprocal borrowing program. This program allows faculty from Middlebury to walk-in to participating libraries in the state and borrow materials from them as if they were full guest borrowers of that library.
*Faculty need to fill out a form and get a VCAL card from Main Circ
*Faculty are expected to return borrowed items to the owning library
*Faculty are expected to abide by the owning library’s guest circulation policies

Please feel free to contact Terry with any general VCAL questions and Elin with any specific borrowing questions.