Office moves

Office moves
This weekend Hannah will be moving to the office that David previously occupied, along the south wall on the 2nd floor. When Nicole begins work on April 8 she will move into the office that Hannah had been in.

Jacque & Kathleen, Visitor, Office Moves

Headline in UA News
Jacque generated some great publicity for the AHSL in working with Kathleen Carlson of ASU (and an AHSL Clinical Education Librarian) to produce a list of trusted consumer health web sites. She and Kathleen gave a presentation on finding health information on the web at a monthly breakfast series for UA and ASU faculty in Phoenix. Their presentation was picked up by one newspaper in Phoenix and by our own UANews.
Link: http://uanews.org/click/23783/1

Visitor
Sandra Martin, Interim Director of the Shiffman Medical Library at Wayne State University in Detroit will be visiting the library next week. As I mentioned in November, Sandra is an NLM/AAHSL Fellow, one of five this year, participating in this highly competitive program for librarians who show strong leadership potential. Sandra will be meeting with many people around the library to ask questions and to learn about our operations. She will visit us again, probably in late summer or early fall.

Office Moves
On Friday Jennifer will be moving downstairs to a cubicle “over the wall” from Amanda. Annabelle will be moving into the Information Desk Offices. This will make their former office available for the ITS Help Desk staff. For the next week Sandra Martin will be using Annabelle’s “old” desk.

Book loss/theft, Campus transformation, Construction, PR

Book loss/theft
This semester the information desk staff have noticed that some of our newer textbooks and reference books have gone missing soon after hitting the shelf. At the same time testing has shown that our front security gates have not been 100% reliable when tested. In addition we learned that the alarm on the first floor hallway doors had been disabled during construction of the new teleconference room. This week UAPD informed us that someone had tried to sell one of our books to the Pima Community College Bookstore. The bookstore had gotten an ID from the suspect and UAPD is following up on this case.
In the meantime we have moved the TV monitor away from the gates to try to improve their performance by avoiding any interference. We’ve had electricians reconnect the alarm system. We’ve had our security company look into installing cameras at all exit doors. We’re waiting to get a quote from them. Please help by keeping your eyes open for any suspicious activity!

Campus Transformation
I have been in contact with the four deans of the health sciences colleges about the transformation process. The deans are very supportive of AHSL and, I believe, will ensure that the library will be protected from any major reorganization. However, it appears likely that the AHSC will be working to centralize business functions. We will have to wait and see what form this takes.

Construction to begin
Facilities Management will be starting construction at the end of next week on the three offices next to the Information Desk. There will be some noise during portions of this construction.

Exhibit publicized
The latest AHSL exhibit describing our liaison program in the Colleges of Public Health and Pharmacy is featured in the Pharmacy Newsletter available at:
http://www.pharmacy.arizona.edu/newsletter/sept2408.html

Office space, 4th floor, new exhibit coming

Office Space
The College of Medicine has accepted our offer to use the offices behind the desk in 2101 (Java City) as the base of operations for the IT Help Desk. In addition, because they are in need of more office space, they will be moving staff members into room 1149E, the former Systems offices. We will be using several vacant office spaces around the building to accommodate the librarians affected by these changes.

Fourth floor update
Here’s a diagram of the furniture arrangement for the fourth floor. It’s not exactly to scale but gives you an idea of the reading room type arrangement on the south side near the stairs. We will start off using existing tables and chairs and see if we might need to add to them later. The “boxes” represent study carrels. Carpenters and movers will be here on Monday to start getting the right furniture up there.

New Exhibit
AHSL will be hosting another National Library of Medicine traveling exhibit from Feb. 12 to March 27, 2009. Called “Changing the Face of Medicine” the exhibit traces the history of women in medicine and recognizes contemporary (and local) female physicians. Jeanette is coordinating this effort and Jose has attended a meeting in Washington, DC to learn more about the displays. More details to follow!

Innovative migration, Visitor and Space

Thank you!

Our migration from SIRSI to Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (“Triple I”) and our move from an in-house database to Serials Solutions are pretty much complete. There is still clean-up and learning going on but the actual transfers of data and setup are done. I know that many people contributed in many ways to these projects. I’d like to especially thank Joan for overseeing two very complex operations. I’d also like to thank Mary Holcomb, Amanda, Javad and Nga for their work on the triple I migration. Andrew See also worked on this and, of course, Robin Sewell did an enormous amount of work and saved us a lot of money. Thanks also to Dave Piper, Marcus and Mary Holcomb (and to Robin) for their past and ongoing work with Serials Solutions!

Visitor

On Thursday, Carolyn Reid, Director of the medical library at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City visited AHSL. Their library has many interesting similarities to our library. They license materials through a multi-university consortium, similar to AULC, they have no systems personnel in the library, relying on a College of Medicine IT unit, and they have a remote site, although theirs is 6700 miles away in Doha, Qatar!

Space

We all know that space is a very valuable commodity on a university campus. A recent email discussion among health sciences library directors shows that almost every library has been asked to give up space – often for offices or other non-academic uses. In reality the library of the future will not need as much space as we have in the past. Our future lies in providing service, developing partnerships and in making sure that space in the library building contributes to the mission of the university.

In this spirit we have been continuing to look at our space situation. Two transitions are taking place that offer us a great opportunity to bring more people into the building, to show that we are aware of the needs of our users and for us to continue to provide attractive workspaces for our staff. The first transition is Marcus and Stef moving upstairs. (Run up and say “hello” when you get a chance!) The second is the early planning stages for a computer help desk that Jose is working on.

The library has offered the old ITC desk (outside of Pat Auflick’s current office) as a space for a help desk. This would be a place where COM students and faculty could bring computers or just questions and get help. It would augment a phone-in help desk.

Under the new IT reorganization, Spencer and Jose (and perhaps others from other COM computer support departments) will likely be helping to support this desk. It would seem natural that their office should be located close to the desk. After talking with everyone involved we have offered to move Pat, Mary Riordan, Annabelle and Jennifer downstairs and to make their current offices available to the new IT organization. This is still in the very early discussion phase but I want to give everyone a “head’s up.” I will do my best to keep you informed about any decisions or action on this matter.

Office Moves

My thanks again to the Space Task Force for their work in March and April. We have been able to implement many of their suggestions: the Purple Room has been enclosed and turned into a quiet study area, study tables have been added to the reference area, the Information Desk staff have been moved to the offices previously used by ILL. We have work orders in to move desks out of Fred’s office and the “grad student” offices in IS and to move tables and chairs in, making them group study rooms.

Other changes had to wait until we got quotes for renovations and until the final computer consultants’ report was issued. The Administrative Team reviewed the Space Task Force report and has done a lot of measuring, walking, thinking and discussing. Here are moves that will be taking place over the next several months, beginning soon.

Mikel will be moving to the space previously used by Lillian.
Paula will be moving to the space previously used by Sue Trombley.
The SIRLS students who work in IS will move to where Paula is now.
Robin will be moving to the office previously used by Nathan.
Jose and Spencer will move to where Robin is now.
Spencer’s current office will remain a work and storage room.
Java City, which has used Mikel’s office to store some racks overnight, will now use the hallway closet near the small classroom.
One IS Librarian will move to where Jose is now.
Two IS Librarians will move to where Mikel is now.
Mari Stoddard will move to the workspace in front of Mary Holcomb’s office.
We have asked facilities to build walls in the space previously occupied by Javad, Nga, Andrew, Tessie, Sue and Jeff, creating three new offices.
Three IS Librarians will move to these new offices.
Tables and chairs will be moved into the offices vacated by the IS Librarians, creating new group study rooms.

Thanks to all of you who are moving. It is a lot of work, added to your regular responsibilities.