St. Ambrose University

O’KEEFE LIBRARY

 

 

 

ANNUAL REPORT

2003 - 2004

Annual Report FY 04

Introduction

During this academic year Information Literacy 101 became a required class for every new student; first years and transfers.  

Librarians took on teaching more classes than ever before.  The entire staff was focused on migration from our old automated 

system to a new more robust system.  The Library hosted a number of events in the library to welcome students, promote scholarly 

communication, and celebrate libraries in general.  Our monographic collection did not grow as it has in past years because 

of a flat budget this year that did not keep up with inflation.  We were able to grow our access to journal literature through consortial purchasing.

 

The highlights of this year have been:

·        The change over of our Library automation system.  The new system has initiated improved services and 

necessitated changes in our processes and procedures.

·        New catalog features include

o       Book cover images.

o       Browsing by call numbers, which replicates scanning the stacks

o       Placing holds on material from other libraries

o       “My Account”, which allows personalization of the catalog.

 

 

 

·        St. Ambrose University was invited to participate in the Council of Independent College workshop “Transforming the College Library”.  

Attending were John Pollitz, Library Director, Lori Rodrigues-Fisher, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and Paul Koch, Dean of the 

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

·        James O’Gorman, Reference Librarian and Jon Stauff, Associate Professor of History were invited to give the keynote address for the 

“Transforming the College Library” workshop.

 

Special Events in the Library

 

 

 

Information Literacy

·        Information Literacy classes continue to occupy a major role in the lives of O’Keefe librarians.  

This year we acquired laptop computers for the Media Program room with wireless access to the Internet.  

This has allowed us to dedicate that room to teaching Information Literacy in an active, hands-on manner.

 

Term	Number of students	Number of sections
01SPR	4	1
01FA	180	10
01WINT	1	1
02SPR	221	11
02SUM	4	1	TOTAL IL101 STUDENTS	1415
02FA	293	15
03SPR	104	8
03FA	401	19
04SPR	200	11
04SUM	7	1

 

·        Librarians continued to offer library instruction to individual classes.  They have concentrated on providing 

higher-level instruction on the skills needed in specific disciplines.  This service has remained relatively stable.

 

 

Reference Department

·        Activity at the reference desk has continued to increase over the years with an increase of 16% this year.

 

·        Usage of our main fulltext article database followed roughly the same pattern as last year.

 

Attendance

·        Our attendance in the library remains high.  These statistics have been affected by equipment 

malfunctions but now can be relied on to give at least a sense of the increased activity within the library.

 

Circulation

·        Circulation of material has continued to grow (8%).  This represents a deviation from what is being 

experienced at many other campuses across the country.

·        Circulation of books to students is up 4% and circulation of books to faculty and staff is up 30%.

·        Surprisingly use of electronic reserves has dropped off some this year (10%).

 

 

·        Use of electronic books has been steady but students have not flocked to using them in great numbers.

·        Group study rooms remain very popular with our students reflecting the number of group 

project assignments.

Technical Services

 

·        We experience a dip down in the number of books we added to the collection this year reflecting 

our flat budget.  We reallocated 10% of the book budget temporarily into the periodicals line in order to 

keep up with the inflation of journal prices

·        We also were impacted by the change to a new automation system which slowed down the ordering process.

 

 

 

·        Our major expenditures for monographs with our main book supplier are in the Business and Social Sciences 

followed by Religion.

·        Other significant areas include, Education, Literature, Science, and Medicine.

Interlibrary Loan

 

·        Student use of this service has grown steadily over the years.  This year, students borrowed more material than faculty for the first time in six years. 

 

·        Interlibrary loan activity continues to grow as an important service to our students, faculty, and the library community.

 

Media Services

·        Media Services continues to develop as source of support for the use of technology on campus.

o       There has been an 16% increase in equipment use

o       12% increase in production

o       6% in crease in technology assistance and workshops given to students, faculty and staff.

 

2002 - 2003 O’KEEFE LIBRARY STAFF

 

Title	Name	Start Date
Director	John H. Pollitz	6-16-97
Administrative Assistant to Director	Mary Kathryn (Kathy) Byers	1-4-93
Head of Reference	Mary Heinzman	12-1-99
Reference Librarian	Stella Herzig	1-3-94
Reference Librarian	Barb Kuttler	1-2-01
Reference Librarian	James O’Gorman	11-11-02
Evening Reference Librarian	Syl Rex	7-1-98
Head of Technical Services	Jennifer Davis	1-4-93
Head of Media Services	Debra Duley	8-26-01
Administrative Assistant for Acquisitions	Nancy Johnson-Van Hecke	3-7-84
Administrative Assistant for Circulation Services	Carol Ann Chouteau	1-18-88
Evening Circulation Supervisor	Aleatha Quarles	12-01-03
Library Technical Assistant – Technical Services	Sue Baumbach	6-15-98
Library Technical Assistants – Cataloging	Susan Green	8-21-95
Library Technical Assistant – Technical Services	Eliza Gilles	3-4-96
Library Technical Assistant – Interlibrary Loan	Cheryl Arnold	7-29-02