Library Quarterly Report FY19 Q4: April-June 2019

Spotlight: Library Lockers Support HRBT Expansion Team

In March of 2019 the library was contacted by VDOT employees Phillip Casteen and Jacob Brown, members of the Hampton Roads Tunnel Bridge Expansion project, a 6-year $3.3 billion construction project considered the biggest in VDOT's history. They requested library support on behalf of a team of 10 employees on the VDOT's HRBT expansion team.

The team needed secure online access to hundreds of technical documents. They wanted the library to find (or purchase), organize, and make those resources accessible in one place. They also wanted to make much of it accessible to a group of non-VDOT contractors, and the library was asked to find a secure and copyright-compliant approach to this difficult task by April.

Library staff sprang into action, collaborating with the patrons to understand their needs, starting with the information required. We took a spreadsheet list of about 350 citations and tried to determine accessibility status, and find links and descriptions.

Discussions between library staff and the team revealed how complex and difficult a task it would be, but Gil Kenner and Barb Neyman set about finding electronic versions of the needed items (most of which were accessible via library subscriptions), while Ken Winter helped repurpose the library's E-reserves and document management system and rechristen it "Library Lockers." Ultimately, we decided to create two lockers: