Volume 2, Issue 6

From Payroll and Benefits:

Reminder: June Monthly Payroll paid on July 1, 2009
Per State of Colorado directive to all state agencies, the June end-of-month pay date will be moved forward to Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Employees should plan ahead for this shift in pay date, especially if any automatic banking bill payments will be affected. The university is not responsible for any financial hardship, includingany potential overdraft charges, created by this pay shift.

University Benefit Deduction Dates Shifting
The university is shifting the deduction date for benefits insurance premiums to post pay. Effective July 1, 2009, all benefits deductions will be taken at the end of the month. As a result, no monthly premiums for University of Colorado medical, dental, life, optional life insurance, AD&D coverage, short-term and long-term disability will be deducted from June paychecks. This change will not impact to coverage for these plans. Please, review their July 31,
2009 pay information carefully to verify that it reflects the correct benefits deductions. This will not affect state medical and dental plans as these are already deducted post pay.


Tobey Stein Retiring
After working in just about every department of the library during most of the years that the Auraria Library has been in existence, Tobey Stein has decided to retire effective June 30, 2009. Most of Tobey’s work has been in the former Architecture and Planning Library and in Reference, Instruction, and Government Publications, where she has provided reference service in person and online and taught many classes in library research, for which she has received many faculty and student commendations. She developed an innovative wiki web site to facilitate student learning and communication. She also works with disabled students on their library research. It was Tobey’s idea to designate computer groups for students and nonstudents during the area remodeling in the summer of 2006, which paved the way for implementing logon software for student and community user areas. In addition to her primary job, Tobey has greatly improved the library’s appearance through her work developing the courtyard plants, and in library displays to promote books and databases. She has contributed to several volunteer projects, such as the holiday mitten tree and food drive for local elementary schools. She also was instrumental in starting the first campus sorority, Sigma Sigma Sigma, a local chapter of the national organization for which she received the campus service award in 2004. She also received the Outstanding Staff Award from the Library in 2007 and the first UCD Chancellor’s Employee of the Month award in 2008 for her teaching and other activities. Tobey, we will miss you!

Louise Treff-Gangler


Technical Services Announcement
On July 6th, Holly Brown will be joining Technical Services in a 6-month temporary position. Holly brings to Auraria Library a wealth of serials experience. For the last nine years, she has been working as our customer service representative at EBSCO, our journal subscription vendor. Please welcome Holly to Auraria Library.


Announcement
The Police Desk at the front entrance/exit of the library will be removed. It is rarely used by the Campus Police and it has caused confusion when patrons sit there.

Evelyn



Technology Department News
General
First of all I would like to congratulate Doug Flint for passing the first of two exams for his A+ certification. Yay, Doug. Also, Niraj will be representing the library on a UCD Computing Standards Committee.

We are getting ready for the III server to move upstairs where it will have improved wiring. That will take place on 6/8. Rick will be supervising the move, but AHEC, ITS, Niraj and Doug will help as needed. There will be III downtime that day. The sign on system for the public computers will be disabled (it usually authenticates through III) that day.

Other projects:
· Hiring another student for the summer
· Computer installation
· Resolving Bugzilla tickets
· Working with Rick to set up an offline Millennium module
· Finalizing the network server move with ITS

Learning Commons Update
Erika Rogers, a consultant will be here between the dates of 6/8-6/19 to help us work on the Learning Commons research plan. You can find information about her company here. Her schedule will be published soon. Tentative information about the work she will do here is found here. We are fleshing out some of our sandbox ideas—ideas that can be tried out easily to see if our users like them-such as a writing center outpost, technology help desk and collaborative work areas. You can find information about these (a work on progress) on our wiki.


Technology Strategy Update
We are working on our first project, which is a Technology Plan for the library. Actually, there will probably be several plans. One might be an “Enterprise Plan” which would cover what software and hardware we have and who is responsible for specific applications, etc. There may also be a strategic plan. The plan we are starting with is general in nature and may cover such topics as are mentioned in this document. The Technology Strategy Committee has a wiki page and we have some sample plans there as well as a list of our members. We are lucky to have Jeff Beel from ITS serving on this committee to give us some outside input. Please feel free to give feedback, leave comments, etc.

-Meg


Congratulations to the Auraria Library faculty whose scholarly articles were published recently:

Beck, T. (2009, January). Encyclopedia of Islam. Charleston Advisor, 10(3), 39-41.

Brown-Sica, Margaret. 2008. "Playing Tag in the Dark: Diagnosing Slowness in Library Response Time." Information Technology & Libraries 27, no. 4: 29-32.

Brown-Sica, Margaret, Karen Sobel, and Denise Pan. 2009. "Learning for All: Teaching Students, Faculty, and Staff with Screencasting." Public Services Quarterly 5, no. 2: 81-97.

Evans, Lorrie, Nina McHale, and Karen Sobel. 2009. "LibGuides." Charleston Advisor 10, no. 3: 47-49.

Ferrer-Vinent, Ignacio J., and Christy A. Carello. 2008. "Embedded Library Instruction in a First-Year Biology Laboratory Course." Science & Technology Libraries 28, no. 4: 325-351.

Somerville, Mary M., and Lydia Collins. 2008. "Collaborative design: a learner-centered library planning approach." Electronic Library 26, no. 6: 803-820.

Somerville, Mary M., and Zaana Howard. 2008. "Systems thinking: an approach for advancing workplace information literacy." Australian Library Journal 57, no. 3: 257-273.