EXCELLENCE IN SERVICE:

This award recognizes creativity, innovation, and dedication in providing service to our users through both our public service points and outreach to infrequent or non library users. It is awarded to an individual or group for creating, developing, or implementing an idea or procedure that noticeably improves overall service to our users and helps the Libraries fulfill its mission to "uphold service to the patron both on and off campus as the ultimate goal of the Libraries." The recipient(s) will demonstrate:

• Ability to step outside one's own day-to-day tasks and examine how his or her position supports the department, Libraries, or community as a whole;
• Understanding of the obligation of the Libraries to "continually assess patron needs and use this information as the chief guidepost for implementing change";
• Initiative in suggesting new policies, procedures, or techniques as a need emerges rather than waiting until the need is overwhelming or requested by others;
• Willingness to communicate with patrons and treat their needs as a high priority;
• Flexibility in production and service delivery;
• Excellent collaboration with community groups, organizations and leaders that will enhance overall library service;
• Outreach to and engagement of library users and non-users in new and creative ways.

This should result in some or all of the following:

• The introduction of new services or the retooling of traditional services resulting in a better user experience.
• Increased responsiveness to the requirements of our users that are streamlined and barrier-free;
• Identifying and promoting library services that support equitable access to the knowledge and information in our libraries. This might include services that are inclusive of traditionally underserved populations, people geographically isolated, people with disabilities, rural and urban poor people, and people generally discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, language and social class. Finding new ways to make library collections or library facilities more useful.
• Improve public image of the Libraries within a community
• Pilot testing unconventional ideas and services;
• Redefining the roles of library staff to better serve users;

NOMINEES:

Monica Pereira

Monica is one of the most prolific members of the reference department. Her level of dedication to her students and faculty is unmatched. She regularly exceeds departmental averages in research consultations, bibliographic instruction sessions, and outreach. Also embeds herself in many classes, thus extending her reach to students.

Monica also has dedicated herself to becoming a master Endnote trainer. Her increased knowledge of the software has made her an invaluable resource to the Endnote training group.

She has become an invaluable resource to the Science Library, and she deserves recognition for all her hard work above and beyond the call of duty.

Jill R. Severn

In her seventh year as head of Russell Library' s Access and Outreach Unit (AOU), Jill Severn has brought forth the fruits of her labor to fulfill the department's goals to become a center in the broadest sense of the word--engaging people in a variety of contexts to learn and connect with each other, with past generations, and with generations to come. As a vibrant and maturing program, AOU activities have made significant inroads in raising awareness, use, and interest in the Russell Library among a wide array of constituencies. Jill Severn had a remarkable 2008 full of first-rate outreach activities including the launch of the Russell Forum for Civic Life in Georgia, fund-raising, progress in providing a collection management system and enhanced web access for Russell Library holdings, and instruction for students. The 2008 fall semester bounty of events to oversee would have overwhelmed many, but Jill garnered $18,000 in grants and donations, and she and outreach assistant Jan Levinson worked with multiple partners to provide ten forums in four Georgia cities and hosted six exhibit-related public programs.

Having the opportunity to host an exhibit from the Highlander Center, Russell staff extended the original exhibit to include materials from the library' s holdings and partnered with a professor and grad student to plan programming. Jill chaired the group, wrote a successful GHC grant, and led funding efforts to support the event. The public programs, held at the Russell Library, Demosthenian Hall, and Athens-Clarke County Regional Library, averaged ca. 40 attendees.

On behalf of the Russell, Jill signed a $5000 research contract with Kettering Foundation to establish the Russell Forum, and convened a diverse steering committee to develop its programming. The Russell Forum will allow the library to find new partners on campus and reach out to statewide constituencies as well as identify interests that will inform collection development. Jill subsequently received another $2500 from Kettering to coordinate a statewide deliberative forum initiative in primary partnership with the Carter Library. The Georgia Deliberation initiative hosted ten forums in four cities around the state including Tifton, Albany, Athens, and Atlanta. Under her leadership, particular attention was invested in the Tifton collaboration for the project, because the University Libraries have a mission to bring the expertise and resources of the University to under-served communities in Georgia and Tifton was a great pilot project. As example, Jill used the deliberative forum initiative to bring Tifton (Georgia) community leaders into partnership for developing their own set of forums based on issues relevant to their citizens.

Jill has also continued to expand the Russell' s instructional program and was in contact with ca. 175 students to provide instruction on using archives and primary sources at the Russell and beyond, in addition to hosting Russell' s annual orientation for history grad students. She participated in the University Faculty Upcycling Program to improve the quality of research and critical thinking of undergraduate students and developed a prototype for a team-taught class that incorporates primary sources in the Russell Library and the National issues Forums Issue guides. She is currently working with Dr. Hamilton of the history department to refine this proposal so that it may be implemented, possibly in 2010. Jill also has been approached to help develop and teach in the newly established Museum Studies Certificate Program that will begin accepting students in Fall 2009. She continues as a member of the Foot Soldier Project [for Civil Rights Studies] faculty. For the second year, she chaired the Educational Enrichment Committee as a member of the King Week Celebration Committee and co-moderated a town-hall style National Issues Forum to discuss the complex and challenging issues related to racial and ethnic tensions that remain a part of American society.

The AOU expanded the Russell' s web site to include more Web 2.0 technologies that allow for greater interaction and dynamic content including: addition of more podcasts, enhancements of appearance and content of Russell blog; implementation of feedback gathering software called Crowd-sound, and a major campaign to add new members to the Russell listserv. Jill's unit also added collection container lists to online finding aids and created a search interface that will allow keyword and subject heading searching, which will debut summer 2009. She co-chaired the Special Collections study group that selected Archivists Toolkit for collection management and has led a collaborative group from Russell, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, and UGL Systems reps to investigate an open source patron management database. This database will allow the AOU to automate much of the information tracked in paper version related to patrons and collections use. It will also allow the Russell to look at data in different ways to assist with assessment of its services and patrons.

Jill was one of twenty-five selected from over 150 applicants to participate in the Society of American Archivists first annual Archives Leadership Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, summer 2008. Willing to share her knowledge and expertise, she co-authored an article on outreach Reaching Beyond Our Grasp: Taking Outreach from the Center to the Edge, submitted to the American Archivist in November 2008.

Through Jill Severn's creativity, innovation, and dedication, the Russell Library is not simply a place to protect and house papers. Indeed, through Jill Severn's Excellence in Service, the Russell Library is a place for learning through exhibits and lectures, a place for civic engagement and public discourse, a rich virtual center for conducting research online, while still maintaining the highest standard for caring and customized research assistance.

Elizabeth White

The UGA Libraries have been trying to start a successful virtual reference service for years now. Elizabeth White has now wrangled the program into an invaluable and indispensable part of our service to patrons. The program began with baby steps of fewer than 500 questions in 2006, grew to over 900 questions in 2007, and doubled in 2008 to almost 2,000 queries. Elizabeth was instrumental in selecting the technology now in use to run the chat service and has worked with tech support continuously to keep it up-to-date and functioning. She is also always on the lookout for new ways the service can be expanded, including new chat platforms such as Facebook and text messaging. She's trained librarians, staff members, and student workers over the years in the art and science of providing chat reference service. She's also been responsible for compiling the statistics that let us gauge the amount of staff time needed to keep the program running like the well-oiled machine it is. Chat reference is now a valuable service we provide to UGA patrons and information seekers from around the world.

In addition to being Queen of the Chat, Elizabeth is also in constant demand for her expertise pertaining to the citation management software program RefWorks. She conducts dozens of classes and individual consultations to instruct students and faculty in its use. She tirelessly promotes the software to the UGA community and is always on call to answer questions from users. She has also served on the Advisory Board for the RefWorks product, making sure that our users' needs and wants are represented to the makers of the program. In this capacity, she's providing service not just to our patrons here at UGA but users of the RefWorks product worldwide.

What RefWorks and Chat Reference have in common is that they are both tools that allow our patrons, through technological advancements, to conduct and complete their research more efficiently and with greater ease. Elizabeth White, with her continued involvement and leadership in the development of these research tools, is benefiting not just our current patrons, but many more in the years to come.

Hargrett Manuscripts Cataloging Project

• Kelly Holt
• Susan Vandale
• Esther Giezendanner
• Julie Dyles
• Donnie Summerlin
• Chuck Barber
• Sheila McAlister

The Hargrett Library holds approximately 6 million pages of historical documents and about 500K historical images in 3,400 distinct manuscript collections. This material represents a key component of the UGA Libraries' unique contribution to the historical and cultural record. The Monographs Original Cataloging unit, with support from Hargrett and DLG staff, is working hard to catalog each of the Hargrett Manuscripts collections (previously only about 900 of the 3,400 collections had records in GIL). The project is expanding access to the Hargrett holdings in the following ways: 1) discovery of manuscript collections in GIL and the Universal Catalog, 2) access via OCLC Worldcat, 3) MARC is being imported into Archivists' Toolkit and combined with XML encoded container lists to serve as the basis of a comprehensive finding aids database for Hargrett Manuscripts that is under construction.

The project is an essential step in preparing for the move to the new Special Collections Building.

I believe that the efforts of this group should be acknowledged in the Service category, because the cataloging project (and its related container list projects) will dramatically enhance the ability of users discover the original historical holdings of the Hargrett Library.