Colleagues,
Hope you had a Happy New Year and a good first week! Classes are back in session, and our traffic, in person and online, is peaking. With classes starting and a new year upon us, there is a lot going on. Here is the latest:
- Library Building Hours: As I mentioned last year, we are reducing Cooper Library hours for spring semester. You’ll find the new hours for Cooper here – https://libraries.clemson.edu/news/libraries-locations-to-change-operating-hours-for-spring-2026/. The hours reductions also include Gunnin Library, Fort Hill, and Hanover House. All these decisions were data-driven. In other words, we are closing at times when we have the fewest number of people visiting us at our various locations, a trend that has held steady for the last 5-10 years. You may get questions about our new hours. I have attached a copy of a talking points document from MarComm, which you can use to answer any questions. Where Cooper Library is concerned, we are exploring options that may allow us to return to our usual operating hours in the future, such as training more students and staff to run the main desk without full-time staff present, shifting employees from other branch libraries to help fill gaps at Cooper, and working with Student Affairs and Academic Affairs to identify other spaces on campus that could serve as a late-night study place for students.
- Searches: We have been given permission to begin the search for the Head of Acquisitions (Chris Vidas’ replacement). I am putting the search committee together now, so we can advertise before the end of the month, have interviews this semester, and hire someone with a start date preferably of July 1.
- Organizational Assessment Project: I have been working with Latoya Daniels, Strategic Consultant in HR, on what we are calling the Organizational Assessment Project. This project, which will take place in spring semester, will allow us to review our strategic directions, conduct an inventory of our services, and rank them in terms of priority. It will also help us assess the talent that already exists within our organization and what external hiring needs we’ll have. Deliverables include agreement on future directions and a list of positions and resources needed over the next five years. This project is being led by the associate deans, who will engage in a retreat this month before the project’s kickoff at our February 12 meeting. We expect the project to be completed in May. This exercise will involve all of you, and we need your feedback to make informed decisions. More soon on this.
- Fundraising this week: In this first full week of the year, we raised $112,500 from two donors. Some of this money will go to hiring additional student assistants.
- Faculty Advancement: Faculty Advancement is still planning to move into Cooper 202, although the move is delayed. We will, however, be offering more programs and activities for faculty in Cooper Library sponsored by Faculty Affairs (https://www.clemson.edu/provost/faculty-affairs/ ). Faculty Affairs also includes OTEI, Global Engagement, the Emeritus College, Faculty review systems and Awards and Honorifics. All employees will remain housed in Sikes, but they will use the office in Cooper for faculty outreach and the library for programming and engagement. One example of this is that OADC (Organization of Academic Department Chairs) meetings will be held in 220B Cooper this semester. All college departments heads and other academic leaders attend these meetings, held one Wednesday a month. It will be good to see them in the building.
- PASCAL Annual Meeting: There were some interesting updates at the PASCAL meeting this past December. The biggest news was an update on Alma/Primo NDE (New Discovery Experience) – https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Primo/Product_Documentation/020Primo_VE/Primo_VE_(English)/Go_NDE/Overview_of_the_NDE_Interface_and_Configuration. PASCAL is exploring migration to this updated platform. The good news is that the backend will remain the same; this is an upgrade to the user interface that should provide greater functionality and be easier to navigate. A task force within PASCAL has been evaluating the product and you’ll see webinars coming from PASCAL over the next two months introducing you to NDE. Based on member feedback, PASCAL will conduct a migration readiness evaluation in April and make the final decision on whether to migrate to the new interface. If we migrate, it will likely happen in June or July 2026.
- Collections: I’m happy to announce the addition of two new collections and a new transformative agreement.
- We now have enhanced access to ebooks through the ProQuest Ebooks Subscription Collection: https://pascalsc.libguides.com/blog/ProQuest-Collection-Upgrade-Expands-Ebook-Availability-for-PASCAL-Members. This adds an additional 480,000 titles to our collection at no additional cost!
- ASERL libraries have entered into an agreement with Adam Matthew Digital. Having reached a collective spend threshold, each participating ASERL institution is receiving perpetual access to titles published in AM Primary and AM Archives Direct between 2017 and 2021, up to 45 resources per institution. A summary of the offer and included titles is available at https://view-su3.highspot.com/viewer/5c5a0968d344d5dbc976698ccca77766?iid=67ae1f378da5468537427818#1. We are getting A LOT of content for very little money, and this resource is partially funded by the administrative budget. We should have access to all this content in a few weeks. Want to learn more? Attend the AM webinar on January 27 (https://events.amdigital.co.uk/rediscover-am-whats-new-and-why-it-matters/registration?utm_source=Hubilo&utm_campaign=New+for+2026&utm_medium=Click+Dimensions).
- We just entered into a new transformative agreement with IGI Global (https://libraries.clemson.edu/news/clemson-libraries-establishes-open-access-agreement-with-igi-global-scientific-publishing/).
- Facilities Projects: There are a number of facilities projects coming up in Cooper.
- New carpet in Dean’s Office: The Dean’s Office will be closed for carpet installation the week of January 26. All employees in the office will be working remotely that week.
- Electrical panel replacement: We need to get all our electrical panels replaced in Cooper due to their age. We are looking at Wednesday, March 18, to Saturday, March 21, to do that work. More on this soon.
- Elevator replacement: Beginning around January 26, the Facilities team will start a major modernization of the library elevators. This project will include new motors, cables, elevator cars, call panels, interior walls, and lighting. These upgrades will significantly improve the reliability and overall experience of the elevators for students, faculty, and staff. Throughout the modernization, at least one elevator will always remain operational. The current plan is to take one elevator out of service for renovation while the other remains available. Once the first elevator is completed and returned to service, work will begin on the second elevator. The project is scheduled to start on January 26 and is expected to be completed during the summer of 2026. As a result, only one elevator will be available during the Spring semester.
- Other initiatives:
- Clemson graduate students will have the chance to showcase their data skills in the first-ever Graduate Student Data Visualization Award competition hosted by Clemson Libraries’ Data Visualization Lab.
- A new artifact celebrating Strom Thurmond’s 90 the birthday is now on display on the 2nd floor of STI (see attached picture).
That’s it for now. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you all next week!
Chris
