BEST COMMITTEE/GROUP COLLABORATION:

Group collaboration, whether occurring as part of the Libraries' formal committee structure, a formally organized work group or team, or an informal group, is a vital part of the participative decision-making process in the Libraries. The group or committee's work may result in a recommendation or a final product such as a new policy, guideline, workflow, webpage or statistical analysis.

NOMINEES:

UGA IR Working Group: Andy Carter, Dave Falke, Robin Fay, Phil Fitzpatrick, Toby Graham, Tim Peacock and Mary Willoughby

As part of the GALILEO Knowledge Repository grant (an ILMS funded grant to build a statewide IR system), the UGA Institutional Repository Working Group convened in order to create and deploy a locally hosted IR. The committee brought together members of the DLG, Cataloging, and Systems for a task that would require extensive collaboration, and the leveraging of a wide range of skill sets.

Within a year, the group was able to successfully launch an IR - the UGA Knowledge Repository - based on DSpace software. The repository now contains almost 10,000 items, including all Electronic Thesis and Dissertations dating back to 1999. The UGA KR will soon be linked, via the GALILEO Knowledge Repository, to IR's across the state allowing for a meta-search of scholarly materials within Georgia.

The project has been a success, but it would not have been so without the professional efforts of its group members. A brief, but of course inadequate, description of their contributions follows:

Andy Carter was Chair of the UGA IR Working Group.

Toby Graham, as co-PI of the GALILEO Knowledge Repository grant, provided the direction and resources necessary to see the project through.

Tim Peacock provided an assessment the suitability of the DSpace software, as well as insight into the hardware that would be required, and problems that could be expected in undertaking such a task. Phil Fitzpatrick installed the production and test instances of the IR, made all necessary configurations to ensure the smooth functioning of the software, and provides ongoing support (which has already required moving the IR to a larger server space).

Dave Falke wrote custom code to allow for the bulk loading of UGA's ETDs, configured the software's embargo function which allows for some ETD's to be restricted to on-campus access, and installed LDAP authentication with allows users to sign in with UGA's MyID. He has also been an integral part of the testing process, and has helped us out of several "uh-oh" moments.

Robin Fay used her experience as a cataloger to help develop metadata guidelines for the IR. She sits on several committees related to the GALILEO Knowledge Repository. And most "visibly," she designed the UGA KR header that graces our sites' home page.

And finally, Mary Willoughby developed workflows for the ingest of materials into the IR, as well as the harvesting and transformation of metadata. She also identified and inventoried over two thousand scholarly items, on various UGA websites, that would be eligible for inclusion in the IR.

MLC Bookmobile: Phoebe Acheson, Caroline Barratt, Danny Bridges, Charles Connolly, Emily Luken, Jenny Moss, Amber Prentiss, Sandra Riggs, Viki Timian, Diane Trap, Paul Van Wicklen and Elizabeth White

The MLC has a lot of things, but it does not have books that circulate to UGA students and faculty. This past year, it was decided to experiment with mobile libraries by bringing books from Main and Science to the MLC with the monthly MLC Bookmobile.

Caroline and Viki organized the program, relying on others in Access Services and Reference to help pull it all together. MLC librarians compiled the book lists each month according to different themes and responding to patron interests in new fiction. Paul and Charles painted the huge, rolling bookcase that held the books and collected and delivered over 100 titles each month for the mobile library. Viki, Danny, the MLC librarians and other student volunteers helped to staff the mobile library, acting as reader advisers and Libraries' boosters as they circulated the books to patrons. Diane created the amusing and creative poster designs that advertised the Bookmobile each month which were printed by Hallie Pritchett.

Over the five 4-hour sessions, more than 300 patrons stopped by to browse the shelves, check out a book, or chat with us about the Libraries. The MLC Bookmobile was a fun way to promote the Libraries and is an excellent example of cross-departmental cooperation and experimentation in developing new outreach programs on campus.

Georgia Government Publications: Brad Baxter, Kelly Holt, Shawn Kiewel, Joanna Orobello, Jonathan Phillips and Susan Tuggle

The Georgia Government Publications team is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Georgia Government Publications database (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/ggp/), Georgia's online repository of state publications from 1994 to present. This includes the acquisition, management and conversion of print materials and the capturing and archiving of born digital documents. Over 48,000 documents are online currently and this number is expected to reach 50,000 sometime around GGP's 15th birthday on May 2, 2011. As the forms of these documents have changed from print to digital and now increasingly to multimedia and video the GGP group develops new methods for capturing and presenting these items. Over the course of the project so far there have been many major changes to keep up with the changing online environment, including conversion from gifs (gifs!) to pdfs, transition from majority scanned to majority born digital documents, upgrades to site architecture, and a major site redesign to improve searching and enhance usability.

Any ongoing project like the GGP has had a lot of hands involved. Currently core personnel are drawn from the Digital Library of Georgia (Joanna Orobello and Jonathan Phillips,) Galileo and Database Support (Brad Baxter and Shawn Kiewel), and Georgia Government Publications (Kelly Holt and Susan Tuggle). Most collaborative projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the GGP is unusual in that it is an ongoing effort with few clear places to stop and survey what has been accomplished. The GGP Team does a great job of keeping this project growing and adapting to new demands placed by the current crop of documents while at the same time developing strategies to make historical publications available to researchers and historians.

If the GGP were frozen where it is right now it would be an impressive accomplishment, but that's not really what the GGP is all about. During the time I've spent spying over the fence I've always been most impressed by how the people who make up the GGP are busy looking for the next task and never shy away from dealing with a difficult set of materials or a technical challenge. They, and the GGP, are a great asset to the Libraries, the UGA community and the State of Georgia.

Cataloging Department

While not the most visible aspect of the move to the Special Collections Libraries building, Cataloging has played a very important part in the process! Everyone in Cataloging has been involved in some way with preparing materials for the move to the Special Collections Libraries building. From cataloging and processing collections, to creating special series for collections to aid in searching in the OPAC, to barcoding (15,000 and counting just for Georgia Room), to applying labels to correcting records in the Catalog - everyone has had a hand in working with these materials. The sheer volume of work has been astounding. Cataloging has pulled together and pitched in - truly a team effort -- all with NO backlog of materials, too!