Overview

The 1999-2000 academic year was marked by changes in personnel. At the end of FY1999 Marylaine Block retired. She had been an employee at St. Ambrose University since 1977. One of her chief accomplishments, beyond years of service to students and faculty, was the creation of “Where the Wild Things Are”, later changed to “Best Information on the Net (BIOTN )”, a website designed to tame the wild World Wide Web and make information available there more accessible to St. Ambrose students. Her efforts were not only helpful to our students but their value was recognized worldwide. Libraries and schools across the globe used her website to help make the Web easier to navigate. When she retired Nanette Miller became head of reference and Marcy Downs was hired as Reference/Technology librarian. In October Nanette resigned as did Pat Kranovich and in November Stella Herzig began her leave of absence for a trip to India. During the ensuing months we searched for replacements for these positions. Barb Kuttler was hired as a temporary replacement for Stella Herzig. Mary Heinzman was hired as a reference/business librarian. She had been the business librarian at Davenport Public Library. We were fortunate to rehire Pat Kranovich as Head of Reference.

As a member of the General Education Committee, John Pollitz worked to establish a one credit Information Literacy class. In March, the faculty assembly voted to accept the General Education Skills proposal that included the Information Literacy class, reaffirming the commitment to library research skills made earlier with the institution of the library requirement for graduation. In May, librarians began developing the curriculum for the Information Literacy class.

The library was a participant in an Iowa State Library pilot project funded by a Carver Foundation grant that provided access to 12 fulltext databases for one year. The pilot project was designed to test how the State Library might provide access to reliable fulltext information to all citizens. Project members included, Bettendorf, Davenport, Scott County, and Muscatine Public libraries, the Eastern Iowa Community College libraries, American Institute of Commerce, Marycrest International University, Palmer College of Chiropractic, and Mount Saint Claire College. In the upcoming year the libraries will continue to cooperate and are purchasing the database service on their own. The price negotiated as a consortium will save O’Keefe Library as much as $19,000 since it allows us to eliminate duplication and cancel some expensive databases we subscribed to on our own. These savings will be used to subscribe to subject specific databases.

DIRECTOR’S REPORT

LIBRARY EVENTS

Nancy Johnson-Van Hecke continued to take responsibility for coordinating our "Brown Bag Lunch Seminars" during this academic year. We hosted at least one Brown Bag Seminar per month with some months having as many as five presentations.

Brown Bags were presented on the following topics:

We also had a series of music events in the atrium.

· The SAU Chamber Singers sang Christmas Carols.

· A Christmas flute duet.

· Paul Jacobson and the Banjoleers.

· Mike Wallace guitar concert.

Mary Heinzman organized a number of displays for the cases in the atrium.

· Women's History Month

· Black History Month

· Native American Art & Crafts

· Sister Ritamary Bradley Memorial

· Antique Banjoes

· Collectibles

· Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa

· Navajo Rug

· Commonplace Books

ADMINISTRATION AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Donations to the library were up this year. This allowed us a greater variety to choose for inclusion into the collection. We are rather stringent in our criteria for what we add to the collection. Those donations that are not added are usually placed on our book sale cart.

	****GIFTS RECEIVED							% incr/dec
	Books	93/94	94/95	95/96	96/97	97/98	99/00*	99/00 - 97/98
	Titles	435	962	1670	1740	1610	1911	19%
	Volumes	460	N.A.	332	1465	1718	1956
	Periodicals
	Titles	40	72	52	46	25	187	648%
	Issues	376	N.A.	332	1465	354	1244
	Media
	Titles	5	0	821	16	9	25	178%
	Volumes	5	0	821	26	46	28
	Total Titles	460	1034	2513	1802	1644	2123	29%
	Total Volumes/Issues	841	0	2899	3499	2118	3228
*99/00 received $3990.00 in donations, including gifts from the Bishop O'Keefe memorial.

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

Librarians continued to purchase books to complement those purchased by faculty. Cathy Bolkum served as an intern from the University of Iowa Library and Information Science program. She looked at our collection in the art subject area. She used statistics from our online catalog and worked with the Art Department faculty to identify strengths and weaknesses in our collection. We will use her findings during the next year to strengthen our collection in that area. We hope to use the model employed by Cathy in other areas of the collection.

Reference librarians and the staff in Technical Services worked together to weed the Reference Collection. We weeded much of the older, out-dated material in the reference section. That which was valuable for its historic coverage was moved into the circulating section and nonessential material was donated or placed on the book sale cart. Barb Kuttler worked with Technical Services to identify material in the collection that had not been entered into the online catalog. Books were either weeded or cataloged, making them more accessible to our students.

Purchases by Subject Area

The majority of our purchases continue to be concentrated in the business, social science, sciences and medicine. Continuations represent annual and series publications for which we have standing orders. They cross all disciplines. This information is mirrored in our cataloging statistics.

Inventory of the Collection

	*INVENTORY OF COLLECTION*

		Physical	Fiscal
		Inventory	Year End			Current Periodical
		1/16/98	6/30/98	6/30/99	6/30/00	Titles Received
BOOKS	Titles	77,282	79,141	82,594	86,233
	Volumes	92,707	94,673	98,185	101,928
Periodicals	*Titles	950	968