Archive for the 'uf' Category

Updates Complete!

Laurie N. Taylor May 9th, 2008

Well, our infrastructural updates went faster than expected thanks to Mark putting in long hours for several days, but we’re now loading again. Right now, we’re sitting at 1,804,535 pages, from 54,260 titles and 71,597 items, and counting. Plus, these can now all be viewed within the slightly updated interface (with tabs for views and additional collection-based pages) and within the better overall structure with optimized code for speed, accessibility, and interoperability.

UF Digital Collections (Infrastructural) Makeover

Laurie N. Taylor May 8th, 2008

Stamped bank card (stamp: 1923, together with earlier stamp of the RSFSR: a Empire definitive with a star overprint and new denomination “P.200P.”)In order to simplify our internal systems through a complete overhaul, we won’t be loading any items for the next week. A week from now, users will notice subtle, yet significant changes in terms of the overall design and in terms of speed. Most of the changes appear small, but they’re all part of the optimization process which will greatly enhance the infrastructure supporting the Digital Collections, stripping out additional code, enhancing system memory usage, and speeding and cleaning the whole process for human users and robots for search engine indexing.

While we’re completing this process, we won’t be loading any items, but as soon as we’re done, the many new items we’re processing will start to load and there are a lot. We’re already sitting at 1,797,881 so we will hit the 2 million mark rather soon. Don’t be dismayed while we’re holding for the next week. In the meantime, check out the many wonderful materials we have online, like the image above, which comes from the digital Archive of the Rossica Society, a world-wide society devoted to all aspects of Russian philately, from the pre-stamp days of Imperial Russia to current post-Soviet philately.

Flickr Updated

Laurie N. Taylor May 1st, 2008

We’ve updated our Flickr images! We’re still working on adding in an auto-load to Flickr which should be simple, but we need some controls on it so bandwidth and server space aren’t issues and so that we load in a systematic manner. Right now, it’s just loading to have another venue for access and one that we’ll continue to build in the future.

The updated photos are old black and white images of campus. We still need to add the labels for these, so hopefully Flickr users could help us on some of these. I’m interested to see if users label these buildings before we have time to, and which buildings get labeled or commented on and what types of comments are posted. Check out our Flickr pages, and label a few if you know what they are!

Also, subscribe to our feed to know when new images are loaded.

www.flickr.com

University of Florida Digital Collections' items Go to University of Florida Digital Collections’ photostream

Work with the UF Libraries!

Laurie N. Taylor April 28th, 2008

With the dire budget Florida is facing this year, there are very few job openings and only openings for critical positions. Luckily, the UF Libraries have a few critical positions to fill and one is for our training coordinator, the “Personnel Services and Employee Development Coordinator.” The official job description is below, and the Libraries’ HR employment page has more information.

I think the best recommendation, though, is from the Libraries’ staff as a whole, and we’re a really fun group. We’re on Facebook (mainly for internal communication since there are so many of us); the HR main page has links to pictures of our picnics and parties; and some of us have blogs like this one and off-UF email if people have less formal questions (like about great grocery stores, the weather–right now it’s hot and dry–about the pet-friendliness of Gainesville, and so on). The UF Libraries have a great community and it’s just a great place to work overall!

Classification Title: Assistant Instructor
Working Title: Personnel Services and Employee Development Coordinator
Position Number : 00012789
Salary: (Starting salaries for positions may be negotiable based on qualifications and experience.) $45,000; Actual salary will reflect selected professional’s experience and credentials commensurate with selected applicant’s qualifications.

Work Location: Main Campus (Gainesville, Florida)
Department: 55130100-LB-PERSONNEL SUPPORT
College/Unit: UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES (55000000)

JOB SUMMARY:
The Personnel Services and Employee Development Coordinator provides leadership to the human resources and training and development functions of the University Libraries. The Coordinator ensures the delivery of vital customer services including: employee relations; interpretation of library and university policies; and faculty and staff recruitment. The Coordinator facilitates key processes including: tenure and promotion, professional development leave, and employee evaluations. The Coordinator develops and leads a need-based and outcome-oriented training and development program.

The duties of this position include:

Human Resources:

  1. Coordinates recruitment activities and supports the work of faculty search committees.
  2. Ensures delivery of excellent customer service through the HR Office.
  3. Develops and maintains policies and processes.
  4. Interprets library and UF personnel policies.
  5. Ensures the maintenance of personnel records and data housed by the HR Office.
  6. Counsels library employees and supervisors on employee relations issues.
  7. Facilitates the processes for tenure, promotion and development leaves.
  8. Facilitates employee evaluation processes.
  9. Liaison with relevant UF entities and officials.
  10. Coordinates recruitment activities and supports the work of faculty search committees.
  11. Ensures delivery of excellent customer service through the HR Office.
  12. Develops and maintains policies and processes.
  13. Interprets library and UF personnel policies.
  14. Ensures the maintenance of personnel records and data housed by the HR Office.
  15. Counsels library employees and supervisors on employee relations issues.
  16. Facilitates the processes for tenure, promotion and development leaves.
  17. Facilitates employee evaluation processes.
  18. Liaison with relevant UF entities and officials.

Employee Development

  1. Assesses library-wide training and organizational development needs.
  2. Develops and implements strategies for delivering training and development programs.
  3. Measures outcomes of training and development programs.
  4. Frequently facilitates and occasionally conducts training sessions.
  5. Actively works to improve the effectiveness of training and development programs.
  6. Develops and maintains a skills inventory database.

Minimum qualifications:

  1. Masters degree in human resources management, higher education, library sciences, or related field.
  2. Professional level experience in human resources management.
  3. Strong customer service orientation.
  4. Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  5. Ability to manage a broad variety of tasks simultaneously and deliver results.
  6. Excellent analytical and innovative problem solving skills.
  7. Judgment, tact and discretion.
  8. Ability to work effectively with diverse groups to achieve objectives.

Preferred qualifications:

  1. Library science or equivalent degree.
  2. Professional experience in an academic or research library.
  3. Advanced knowledge of laws and standards pertaining to employee relations and employment.
  4. Experience developing and conducting training programs.
  5. Expert knowledge of spreadsheet and web development software.

APPLICATION PROCESS:
The University of Florida is an equal opportunity employer and is strongly committed to the diversity of our faculty and staff. Applicants from a broad spectrum of people, including members of ethnic minorities and disabled persons, are especially encouraged to apply. As part of the application process, applicants are invited to complete an on-line confidential and voluntary demographic self-disclosure form which can be found at: http://www.hr.ufl.edu/job/datacard.htm. This information is collected by the University of Florida’s Faculty Development Office to track applicant trends and is in no way considered by the Smathers Libraries in the selection process.

Please submit application materials via e-mail. Send, as attachments (MS-Word format preferred), a cover letter detailing your interest in and qualifications for this position, your current resume and a list of three references. Include address, telephone and email information for references. Please include a 250-word document on the topic “The process of developing a need-based and outcome-oriented training and development program.” Apply by June 8, 2008 (applications will be reviewed as received). Send all required application materials to Brian Keith, Smathers Libraries Financial and Human Resources Officer, at: brikeit@uflib.ufl.edu.

Job Close Date 06-08-2008

Blogs at the UF Libraries

Laurie N. Taylor April 27th, 2008

The UF Libraries now have a multi-user install of WordPress (known as WordPress MU). The blogs that the Libraries have been using externally from various other sites, including this one, are now being centralized for ease and improved communication. Blogs at the UF Libraries are here: http://blogs.uflib.ufl.edu.

The Blogroll for the main blog includes only the blogs at the UF Libraries, so the first page is an easy entry into the rest of blogs. Right now, many of the blogs are still being pulled in and other non-blog areas of the Libraries are being tested for reformatting  as blogs. After all, blogs are great for any chronological style information site and for sites that are heavily populated by events, dates, and other happenings.  This blog will likely remain here. It may become a more personal-professional chronicle of my work (which is unlikely given that my information addiction makes the professional the personal so the two aren’t really separable); or I may simply clone the blog so that it’s easily accessible in either area (more likely); or the other blog may host the day-to-day technical update blog and this may stay as it is for my reflections; or I may pursue some blend of the possible options.

LibX: Browser Plugins for Libraries

Laurie N. Taylor April 22nd, 2008

LibX is a browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that provides direct access to your library’s resources. It’s an Open Source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built. Currently, 330 academic and public libraries have created public LibX editions, and UF is one of them.

The toolbar is wonderful because it allows searching of the Library’s catalog from the browser without navigating to the UF Libraries page. That’s one minor plus, but then it also adds the UF icon to WebPages with book identifiers (Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, or other booksellers) so that when searching for a book in Amazon, it’s only once click to see if the Libraries have the book. The toolbar allows you to search the catalog, UF Digital Collections, databases, for articles, and through Google Scholar and UF’s Research Gateway.

There are many major bonuses, but one is the ability to reload a page using the Library Proxy. No longer will you have to return to the library page and search for an article after searching the web from off campus and finding an article you want. Now, you can simply reload the journal page with the proxy to have full access!

Read more about it here or on the Libraries website to see related tools as well.

Over 1.5 million!

Laurie N. Taylor March 23rd, 2008

Susan Proudleigh by Herbert G. de LisserIn August, the Digital Library Center proudly announced breaking the one million page mark, with over a million pages online for more than “20 collections, representing more than 44,000 titles in more than 52,000 volumes.” Now, just 7 months later we’ve added slightly over another 60% of that to the collections for a total of 1,621,841 pages, over 5,1746 titles (up from 44,000) and 67,487 volumes (up from 52,000). That means we’ve been producing almost 10% of our total holdings each month for the past 7 at nearly 100,000 pages a month!

The incredible production rate is far more incredible when the types of pages are considered. Large scale digitization initiatives produce far more pages than this, but any comparison would be apples to alligators because our pages are from all sorts of documents, photographs, maps, video, audio, and more. Each file requires metadata (title, author, and a lot more) so books are relatively quick per item for page count. Letters, maps, and photographs are much slower with the same information often required for each page. Plus the 100,000 pages have been produced over the fall to spring semester break and spring break, times when student workers are in short supply, and when many staff people take their own vacations. The page count also can’t accurately reflect the audio and video files, which are counted as a single file for any video or audio clip, even if that one page really means an hour long video, with all of the required processing. Even large printed materials skew aren’t accurately represented by pages given that a single page map will often be several square feet in size, requiring additional processing and time for a single page. Despite the difficulties in reporting fully accurate statistics, the production rate remains extremely impressive and what’s even more impressive is thinking about how many people all of these pages, and all of these materials, will help. Of course, many of the materials are also books like the cover image above, which is from Susan Proudleigh by Herbert G. de Lisser. The book is well out of print and was rare and hard to find, so hard to find that this was actually digitized from a photocopy because that’s what was readily available. But now Susan Proudleigh is available for all.

The fast and steady production is due to a great crew of dedicated workers (including students, some of whom have been at the DLC for multiple years), great technologies that we all work to constantly improve, and constant work to streamline digitization work flows. While we may not be able to much faster than this current speed of roughly 100,000 pages a month, and we may go slower during the summer with missing student workers, 100,000 pages is still a great service for the University of Florida, the University Libraries, and every citizen as all benefit from more information being openly available.

Google SketchUp Campus Contest 2008!

Laurie N. Taylor March 8th, 2008

Google is having another design-a-campus contest in SketchUp. It’s the Google 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition! Students around the world can compete by modeling their school’s campus buildings in Google SketchUp, geo-reference them in Google Earth, and submitting them by uploading to the Google 3D Warehouse. Students at higher education institutions almost anywhere in the world can submit individually or in teams of students. In addition to Google’s prices, for those modeling schools in Florida or the Caribbean or circum-Caribbean, please also submit your designs to the University of Florida Digital Collections or the Digital Library of the Caribbean, or your own school’s digital collections as applicable so that the schools can also host and archive your designs for current viewers and for posterity.

If you’re a University of Florida student designing the University of Florida campus, please let us know. We’re the folks at the Digital Library Center we’d love to lend moral support and positive thoughts throughout the competition and to host and archive the campus in 3D after the contest ends!

University of Florida Video Archives Online

Laurie N. Taylor February 15th, 2008

Some of UF’s video archives are now online. While most of the sports videos are in copyright and can’t be loaded online, there are tons of great videos that can be and we’re starting to slowly load them.

We don’t have that many yet, but what we do have is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/laurientaylor
http://www.youtube.com/user/lntaylor78
http://www.youtube.com/user/UFlibraries

I switched to the new name so that it was clear that these are UF Libraries’ archival videos, but I don’t yet know how to transfer the videos from the other two accounts, so if anyone knows an easy way to do this, please let me know.

Progress on loading these will continue to be slow because of the time involved. We’re processing for preservation (converting to a normal format, saving, and loading to UFDC for online access, and then saving to another format and sometimes editing for YouTube since the videos have to be under 10MB and under 10 minutes for each upload). It’s a long process, but it’s nice to see some of the videos up!

Happy Birthday! (late and early)

Laurie N. Taylor February 13th, 2008

Homecoming Parade Cake FloatUF’s Libraries is a great work environment, as is the Digital Library Center in particular. We’re all friendly and fun, and this week we’re having a triple birthday celebration with three people having birthdays within the week. In light of our collective birthdays, and our hard work with nearly 1.5 million pages in the Digital Collections and more loading each day (and many audio and video files that can’t be counted in pages), these pictures are for us!

There are more birthday-related pictures here.

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