Director's Cut
(September 2014) It's been wonderful to see the thousands of students return to campus for Fall semester (albeit often exhausting, since many of us are a little rusty on moving this fast, after a relaxing summer). The library had its second-busiest first week ever, welcoming an average of 3,332 students into our doors daily! I am looking forward to watching us feed all those minds and all those needs, with all the special skills and services we provide to complement their classroom instruction. Keep those running shoes on! -GR
Technology Clips

  • SuperSearch Now Available. SuperSearch, a “new generation” research tool that searches all of the library’s existing subscription databases, the library catalog, and selected free online resources at the same time, is now available on the library home page, the main catalog page, and the databases page. SuperSearch is not intended to replace our existing rich collection of more focused databases, but does provide users with a familiar EBSCO-based starting point for many of their research needs. If this tool proves effective for topic searches of our catalog as well, we hope to be able to discontinue our subscription to Innovative's ENCORE keyword search product.
  • New CTC Coordinator. As of July, with the retirement of Barb Durland, the CTC has a new coordinator: Marcelo Nogueira, who used to oversee technology at the Watsonville Center. In addition to his CTC responsibilities, Marcelo takes on oversight of the student printing program and the "virtual desktop" technology program, both of which heavily impact the library. I'm sure we'll see Marcelo in the library often!

Library Clips

  • Book Weeding Project & New Study Spaces. The number of students coming to the library has continued to increase over the past several years, as emphasized by one of our current mantras, "we've never been busier." To help accommodate this growing use, this summer we completed the first major but careful “refresh” of our book collection in more than 20 years, removing from the collection over 8,000 outdated or unused books. This enabled us to replace a large section of bookshelves with 30 additional study spaces for our students. We also hope that a more current and compact physical collection will be more useful to – and used by – our students.It has been delightful to see how many student have already found the new study spaces - most have been in use every day!
  • Browsing Video Collection. Our new browsing video collection, which we considered over the past few years, is now a reality! All of the PN 1997 videos and DVDs (feature films) are now located in the same nook as the Aptos Browsing book collection and the current periodicals. These videos can be checked out by anyone for one week at a time. As the PN 1997 videos are mostly general interest films, we don't expect much impact on faculty needs. Of course, faculty are still able to borrow these or any videos for extended periods of time, and place any desired titles on Reserve for restricted student access.
  • Faculty Newsletter. The faculty survey we conducted in Spring identified a need for more effectively informing faculty about changes and services at the library. To help meet this need, this Fall semester we inaugurated our first annual faculty newsletter, which I hope will serve as a way to let campus faculty know what’s available from the library, be it a new online research tool, a physical service in the library, or anything else that can help students be more successful during their time at Cabrillo.
  • Sentinel and Pajaronian Being Digitized. Both the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian are finally being digitized! The Sentinel digitization is part of a UC Riverside project, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, and, when completed, the Santa Cruz Public Library will have free access to the collection (and hopefully us!)- stay tuned for more details. The Register-Pajaronian is being digitized by the Watsonville Public Library - this project is in the early stages. Both of these projects bode very well for the preservation of our local newspapers - and we may some day be able to discard all those paper issues of the Sentinel we've been holding on to since the microfilm product was discontinued!
  • MOBAC Bits.
  • Santa Cruz Public Library now has a new online catalog, Polaris. They hope to be able to resume ILL service by January 2015. Planning to put a tax measure before voters for the June 2015 election, seeking funds for facilities upkeep.
  • Both Santa Cruz Public and Monterey County collections are now both "floating," which means that items will remain located at whatever branch the item is returned at.
  • MIIS (Monterey Institute of International Studies) now has an instruction program for Terrorism Studies, and the library is building a supporting collection for the new program. They are also trying to decide whether to upgrade from Millennium to Sierra, or leave III and go with a different product.
  • Watsonville Public Library is upgrading from Millennium to Sierra - once they do, we will have a local site to check out our possible new system (some day) in action!
  • Monterey Public Library has a new library director, Bill Michael, who previously ran various library systems in the eastern Sierras.
  • Hartnell is moving to the 16-week compressed calendar, like Cabrillo.
  • Most libraries are now hiring again, both librarians and staff positions - a very good sign.

Campus Clips

  • Building 100 Back In Service. As of this Summer session, all of the former tenants of Building 100 are back in place: A&R, Financial Aid, the College Bank, Counseling, and the Transfer Center. The building received not only an improved heating & ventilation system, but it also got a nice facelift - stop by and check out the new digs!
  • New Dean of Student Services. Beginning in August, Michelle Donohue-Mendoza is Cabrillo's new Dean of Student Services. Michelle comes to Cabrillo from West Valley College, where she worked from 2007 to present in various management roles within Student Services.I expect that Michelle, like her predecessor Sesario Escoto, will be a familiar face in the library.
  • Bookstore Textbook Sales. Although textbook sales at our "new" Barnes & Noble bookstore are getting better, they still are not at sustainable long-term levels. Textbook sales for 2013/14 totaled about $1.73 million, considerably down from previous years ($2.44 million in 2010/11, $2.20 million in 2011/12) in spite of the growth of textbook rentals. The library has agreed to include streamers inside textbooks on Reserve informing students of textbook options available at the bookstore. For your perusal, here are the Spring 2014 textbook sales breakdowns (with Fall 2013 figures for comparison):
  • New, print textbooks: 58% (down from 72% in Fall13)
  • Used textbooks: 19% (up from 9% in Fall13)
  • Textbook rentals,used & new: 23% (up from 19% in Fall13)
  • Digital textbooks: 1% (same as Fall13)

GR