Director's Cut
(September 2013) Welcome to Fall 2013! (Where did the summer go?) As always, our world did not stop during the summer, and I have lots of changes and information to share with you as we begin another semester. Although enrollment is again down slightly from last Fall, the library appears to be starting off as busy as ever, with 3400 (!!!) students coming in on the first day to use our services, our resources, and our spaces. I have my running shoes on - do you? -GR
Technology Clips

  • New Library Student Technical Assistants. With the departure of Scott Hill and Daniel Bomarito, we have hired two new student technical assistants, who will be joining Frank Keldsen in helping our students with their technical challenges this Fall. Please welcome Michael Mosko and Leticia Diaz, whose pictures will soon be gracing the photo board!
  • New (and Huge) E-Book Database. As of this summer, the library is subscribing to EBSCO's eBook Academic Collection, containing over 120,000 eBooks which can be viewed by multiple students at a time and downloaded to portable devices. The collection draws largely from university and other academic presses, and covers most academic subject areas well. This is our first foray into subscribing to book collections, rather than purchasing them. The price was right, but we do relinquish some control over continuity, selection, etc. I do expect this new collection to be quite useful for all our researching students, particularly our distance education students.
  • New M&O and IT Problem Reporting System. The new Track-IT system for reporting IT and Maintenance problems, was successfully rolled out late this summer. The new system replaces the old IT system and the MaintenanceTracker system, and is much easier to use than either of the old systems. Since the new systems use our individual network accounts, Leah has graciously agreed to handle submitting any of the broader building problems we encounter (e.g., heating, lighting, plumbing, etc.).

Library Clips

  • Staff Changes. With the departure of Meredith Sarmento this summer, the library again has a vacancy in Technical Services. Temporarily filling this part-time position is Rachel Lee, who is also working part-time in Technical Services at the Santa Cruz Public Library. Our previous newest arrivals, Katie Clark, Aleah Kropholler, and Leah Hlavaty, already feel and act like experienced library veterans after spending a very busy summer taking care of new and old business at the library. If you want to be impressed and entertained, just ask any of them "so, what did you work on this summer?"
  • New Instruction Librarian. Another staff change this Fall is of course the arrival of Michelle Morton, our new Instruction Librarian, who will be working with faculty across campus to bring a bit of subject-specific information competency to their students. She will be providing us with overall coordination of our course-related instruction program, which I expect will begin to grow again. In anticipation of a fairly heavy transitional volume during Fall, Eve Hinkley has agreed to take on a special assignment to work with Michelle and help us provide depth and backup for the instruction program. Sylvia Winder and I will of course continue to handle an assortment of instruction sessions, but the bulk of sessions will be heading Michelle's way. Be nice to her, & remind her to go home in the evening!
  • New Student Group Study Rooms. The old library conference room was converted this summer into two new student group study rooms, Room 1040A and 1040B. This brings the number of group study rooms to 13 (including the two small study rooms upstairs by the elevator), a nice increase for this very high-demand service! A couple of loose ends remain outstanding for the two rooms - changing the locks, and installing chalkboards.
  • CIS & Engineering Tech Course Reserves Back in Library. As of this Fall, any course reserve materials for the CIS and Engineering Tech programs will again be located in the library, not the CTC. With the opening of the new STEM Center this semester (see story below), faculty from these programs will be spending time in the STEM Center instead of the CTC. Continuing to be located at the CTC are course materials for CABT, DM, and CS. At some point in the future, we may develop a course reserves collection in the new STEM Center, but it's best not to ask them to take on too many new things all at once!
  • MOBAC Bits. A few tidbits from the summer's MOBAC Admin Council meetings:
  • The Admin Council created a new MOBAC committee, the Literacy Committee. Details to be developed - could be an interesting one.
  • I completed my one-year term as chair of MOBAC in June. The new chair is Kim Bui-Burton, director of the Monterey Public Library.
  • Gavilan College library, Santa Cruz Public, Pacific Grove Public, Monterey County Free Libraries, Monterey Public Library, and Watsonville Public libraries are all hiring - good sign!
  • Gavilan College library is working with their English department on creating an L10-like program, modeled after ours.
  • It appears that the MOBAC workshops created by our committees have been noticed: MOBAC committees are being asked to consider creating versions of workshops to offer in the east bay and the peninsula, with funding from PLP (our umbrella consortium).
  • ENKI, the interesting new Califa e-book collection project, will be available later this year, and subscriptions for all MOBAC and PLP libraries will be funded by PLP. Could be a good thing, could be a non-thing - stay tuned.
  • Santa Cruz PL and Watsonville PL have a likely title for next year-s county-wide Read: What It's Like To Go To War, by Karl Marlantes (library copy: DS 559.5 M358 2011).

Campus Clips

  • New Faculty Positions.Along with our new librarian Michelle Morton, the following new full-time faculty are beginning their tenure at Cabrillo this semester: Jeffrey Bergamini (Computer Science), Barbara Johnson (Nursing), Zerubba Levi (Chemistry), Mike Matera (CIS), Rebecca Morgan (Psychology), Terry Mullin (Accounting), Mary Beth Peterson (Anthropology), Jennifer Vered (CABT), Brian Garcia (Nursing, temp contract), Beverlie Terra ( Culinary Arts, temp contract), and Jamilya Ukudeeva (Political Science, temp contract). I suspect we'll be seeing most of them in the library before too long - if you see any of them, please welcome them to our world!
  • New STEM Center Opens in Building 800. With the completed remodel of the 800 building, all of the STEM programs (Engineering, Engineering Technology, Computer Science, CIS, Physics, and MESA) are now collected in one location, sharing classrooms, faculty offices, and student space. A part of this remodel has resulted in the creation of a new STEM Center, which combines on the 2nd floor the former MESA Lab, Physics Learning Center, and ETech labs. The new consolidated center, coordinated by Sue Tappero, will be open more hours than any of the original labs, providing expanded learning support for students in the STEM programs. I stopped by on Tuesday, and it is a wonderful space, with lots of computers, tables, chairs, and teaching rooms for students. Should be a very, very happening place beginning this semester!
  • New President. The new president of Cabrillo, Dr. Laurel Jones, began her new role on July 17. She brings a very different style to the President's Office, and will no doubt be having considerable impact on our world over the coming years. I've arranged to give her a tour of our vibrant world on Sept. 11 at 2pm (should be a nice busy time!). If you see her in the library, say hello and get her a library card!
  • Faculty Obligation Number. The Faculty Obligation Number, or FON, is the number of full-time faculty the state funds us for, and expects us to have as a minimum. For the past few years, our FON was frozen at around 186 due to the challenges of the economy. This year, the state is unfreezing the number, and statewide expectations have long been that those numbers would increase considerably, thus allowing for larger hiring efforts for full-time faculty positions. However, preliminary figures from the state have been received, and appear to indicate that this number will be dropping for us and other colleges. The numbers are being confirmed, but, if our new estimated number of 163.6 is accurate, this would mean that Cabrillo would be approving very, very few new full-time faculty hires for next year, and possibly longer.
  • LRC News. The ever-lively world of the Learning Resource Centers behind the library (Math Learning Center, Reading Center, Tutorials, Writing Center) did not slow down for the summer. We now have a brand new shared copier/printer/scanner for use by all of the learning centers, and which replaced the individual copiers in several of those departments. The library is managing paper costs for the machine, and will periodically charge back to each learning center the cost of their use. Another new "shared" item is an excellent promotional/descriptive video for the learning centers, coordinated and scripted by Nancy Phillips of the Reading Center, and funded by Marketing and the Library. The video can be viewed at and will soon be put on the Learning Resources website. We have plans to extract each center's portion and list them independently on each center's web page as well, later this semester. We hope that this video will help us educate new students on the benefits of the services available in the LRC.

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