| v. 2 no. 1 | March 1998 |
Five vendors responded to the RFP issued and made campus presentations open to the entire university community. The selection of SGI was made by Information Resources and a faculty advisory committee that determined requirements, researched vendor offerings and services, reviewed the benchmark testing performed at Lehigh, and evaluated the overall cost/benefit to the campus. The faculty advisory committee included Terry Boult, EECS; Dave Johnson and Bruce Dodson, Math; Celal Kostem, Civil Engineering, Arnold Kritz and Glenn Bateman, Physics; Tony Liakopoulos, Mechanical Engineering; Anne Meltzer, EES; Lou Plebani, IMSE; Jeff Rickman, Materials Science; Bill Schiesser, Chemical Engineering; and Gary Simmons, Chemistry.
IR Group Leader for Advanced Technology Kevin Weiner, who coordinated the selection process, noted that these workstations provide advanced computing capability with an emphasis on floating point calculations required for a wide variety of scientific and engineering applications. As part of this upgrade, a large 16 processor SGI compute server will be installed quickly. The new SGI compute server will have 24 times the compute power of the main IBM Compute Server, CS1. It will also be configured with tools and applications to allow the use of multiple CPUs in processing much more massive jobs than those possible today. The IBM Compute Server cluster will remain available until June 1999 so that applications now being run on the current IBM workstations can continue to operate on the Compute Server and be migrated over time to SGI machines.
The SGI machines replace IBM Unix workstations acquired in the early 1990s. Due to the rapid advances in computing , these early workstations now have less computing power than intel-based Pentium machines. They are unable to run current versions of the Unix operating system or newer releases of some applications. During summer 1998 the old public site workstations will be removed. Most of those sites that do not become SGI sites will be converted to PCs.
Terms of the final agreement are expected to include short-term deep discounts for departments that wish to acquire their own machines through May 1998 and a very favorable longer-term discount program extending through June 1999. In April the SGI "Magic Bus" will come to campus to demonstrate the equipment available to interested parties.
Information Resources'
expanded use of book pre-selection programs ensures the timely arrival
of new books for use by faculty and students. The first 14-carton shipment
that arrived in February is the initial result of joint efforts by Lehigh
faculty and the IR Collection Development and Information Organization
Teams. Working with faculty liaisons this past fall, Lehigh's librarians
created a highly specific book selection profile subject by subject. For
example, Economics Professor Colleen Callahan consulted with her colleagues
to identify academic and commercial publishers most likely to issue suitable
titles. She is pleased with the option to examine the actual books before
making final decisions about retention.
Lehigh's vendor, Yankee Book Peddler, matches the profile against its database of new publications and ships matching items automatically. The books are received with the option of returning any unwanted titles. To date profiles have been constructed for about 20 subject area across the curriculum. The benefits of such programs include more timely receipt of relevant library materials; some additional discounts; and less item-by-item effort by faculty, librarians, and acquisitions staff.
IR Group Leader for Collection Management Christy Roysdon is enthusiastic about the program's potential for helping faculty make new selections. "We finally are seeing useful automation of the labor-intensive selection process without elimination of capabilities necessary to academic libraries. With the approval program ensuring the timely appearance of materials we know we need, faculty and librarians can devote more of their effort to special resources germane to distinctive aspects of Lehigh's curriculum and research." For instance, the vendor's Web interface provides immediate access to a wealth of (searchable) information about published and yet-to-be published academic books in very specific categories. In the future faculty will be able to preview titles for shipment and make these additional selections. Faculty interested in doing this prior to the campus-wide orientation planned for fall 1998 should contact their Client Services Team Librarians.
Known as "approval plans" in the book trade, the book pre-selection programs have been in existence for decades. They are used widely by large academic libraries and have been implemented successfully at Lehigh for more than ten years on a smaller scale. However, they are of increased utility now due to the addition of online components and new services for automatic cataloging and physical processing which allow for moving the books even more quickly onto the library shelves.
A complete
inventory of the library circulating book collection began in January,
starting with the literature section in Linderman Library and the computer
programming section in Fairchild Martindale Library. A complete inventory
of the 460,000 circulating library books has not been performed since the
books were barcoded prior to opening the E.W. Fairchild Martindale Library
and Computing Center in1985. The results will be used to update records
in ASA, the online catalog, so that they correctly reflect the actual holdings
and to replace needed missing titles whenever possible.
Although the inventory was begun using a manual system of assessment,
the transition to a more efficient technique is underway. Using new barcode
scanners and the advanced capabilities of ASA, the Information Delivery
Team will determine what books are missing by scanning the books on the
shelves and then, via computer programs, comparing that data with the barcode
database of books owned or currently in circulation. Although automated
inventory systems have been used in grocery and retail stores for some
time, they have only more recently become truly functional in library settings.
Team Leader Gail Kriebel reports that by using the new scanners this ambitious
project should be completed prior to the fall 1998 semester.
er with Richard Russo
I
New Lehigh IDs Serve as Copy Cards
A thin magnetic stripe appears on new Lehigh University identification cards that enables Lehigh University faculty, staff, and students to use the ID as a copy card. Value in any denomination (from ten cents to twenty dollars) can be added to a Lehigh identification card at any of the copy machines in either library or at the card vending unit in Fairchild.
IR Staff Recognition Program Initiated
Information Resources has instituted a staff recognition program. Forms will be distributed to the campus, available at major service points, and on the IR home page at http://www.lehigh.edu/ir/greatstaff.html. Clients are encouraged to recognize individuals or teams that have provided work or service of exceptional quality in either a direct public service or support setting.
Additional PC Upgrades Nearing Completion
In the near future the IBM workstations in Iacocca Hall B103 will be replaced with 16 new Dell Pentium II 233 mhz MMX machines and a new printer. All the remaining public site personal computers in the Linderman and Fairchild Libraries have now also been upgraded to pentium based machines. New printers are generally installed immediately adjacent to the banks of computers.
Final Store Transition Recommendations Issued
The Computer Store Transition Group completed its work and issued the final version of its recommendations in January 1998. An open meeting on the draft recommendations was held on November 20th. Subsequently there were minor revisions to the draft version that was widely distributed during the fall semester. The final version is on the IR web site at: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inmic/cst/comprept.html or navigate from Computing Services to Purchasing Computers to the entry for the Group. Group members were: Barry Bean, Biological Sciences; Ray Bell, Education; Susan Cady, Information Resources; Terry Delph, Mechanical Engineering; David Joseph, Residential Services; and graduate student Mike Kozma.
New Microfilm Readers and Printers at Libraries
The microfilm reader/printers initially installed by the new copy service vendor (Copico) in July were replaced in early February with more robust models from Minolta. These machines handle both positive and negative film automatically and withstand heavy use.
Campus Year 2000 Alert
During March the Year 2000 (Y2K) Client Services Task Force comprised
of Enterprise Information Consultants Gail Fullman, Jane Frounfelker, and
Sherri Yerk-Zwickl will be meeting with Lehigh staff to help the campus
prepare for the transition to Year 2000. They and the computing consultant
for the particular college or stem will address both hardware and software
issues initially through presentations to department heads during regularly
scheduled meetings in various university stems. In addition Information
Resources will unveil a Y2K website, and begin a listserv to facilitate
staff exchange of helpful information.
Client Services Group
Leader Tim Foley has announced that Stacey Kimmel will assume the position
of Team Leader for Student and General Services by early March. She will
oversee Information Resources "help desk" operations for library, computing,
and telecommunications, including the 8HELP hotline. Foley noted that this
is a key position in the on-going delivery of excellent client services
and that Ms. Kimmel's background uniquely qualifies her to manage these
functions within Lehigh's advanced technological environment and merged
organizational structure.
In library reference and systems positions at Miami University of Ohio, Ms. Kimmel was responsible for a library CD ROM help desk, a general computing help desk for hardware and software, and the development of a plan for combining computing and library assistance that was successfully implemented. She is skilled in training and supervising student assistants, producing user guides and technical documentation, publishing and designing interactive services on the Worldwide Web, and managing library automated systems.
At North Carolina State University in Raleigh Ms. Kimmel served as Collection Manager and Digital Collections Coordinator, further extending her knowledge of emerging electronic resources. Her academic credentials include an undergraduate degree from Purdue University in Indiana, a master of library science degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and graduate work in systems analysis, technical writing, women's studies, and psychology. Ms. Kimmel's hobbies include horseback riding, paper making, and gardening.
Professor Greene was closely associated with the Friends of the Lehigh Libraries during his career as an English professor and in his retirement. For more than twenty years, the Friends sponsored the Concert/Lecture Series, popular lunch-time presentations by Professor Greene accompanied by selections from his legendary collection. Library Director Emerita Berry Richards recalls that the Greene lectures were among the first programs sponsored by the Friends, noting that the lectures had a faithful audience and were sometimes standing-room only events.
Professor Greene was known for his clever and humorous writing about music as well as his vast knowledge. Preceding each concert/lecture, he wrote an engaging and witty essay that was distributed to the campus and Friends' membership by the Libraries in advance of the event. Copies of these lecture notes have been retained in Special Collections. Professor Greene's music-related publications also encompassed jacket notes for the Musical Heritage Society, contributions to the American Record guide, and countless reviews of Lehigh Valley performances. His major opus, Greene's Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers, was published in 1985.
The collection of more than 20,000 CDs and LPs is housed in the Music Department. Fortunately the Department has new facilities in the Zoellner Arts Center that will accommodate it. Music Department Chair Nadine Sine finds that the collection has already enhanced the academic program: she has used it in several class lectures herself and recently a recording of a somewhat obscure piece of chamber music needed by a student performer turned up in the Greene collection. Professor Sine stated that Lehigh would never have had enough funds to purchase a collection with this depth in opera and vocal music. The music-related book and periodical collection will be added to Linderman Library.