June 2, 2000
Dear Members,
It was so nice to see many of you at the pre-conference dinner at the Glen Sanders Mansion on May 18th and the "Academic Libraries Partnering With Our Communities" conference at SCCC on May 19th. We heard some wonderful, thought-provoking and inspiring presentations at the conference, once again proving that ENY-ACRL provides relevant, content-rich programming to its members for a reasonable fee.
I feel privileged to be a part of the first electonic issue of the Newsletter as I write my first letter to the members as ENY-ACRL President. Though the method of delivery of the ENY-ACRL Newsletter is now electronic, the substance has not changed. I encourage each and every member to submit items to Steve Black for the Newsletter and to help make it reflective of the diverse and active membership it serves.
The Newsletter is an important forum of communication for our chapter as is the ENY-ACRL listserv. If you subscribe to the ENY-ACRL listserv, as I hope all members do, then you are probably aware of the unfortunate incident that occurred on May 15th, when we received an inappropriate diatribe from some unknown source. The Board of Directors will be addressing the issue of listserv moderator at its June 27th meeting. Please watch the listserv for further announcements about a listserv moderator.
The Board of Directors will also be working on some administrative matters related to incorporation. While we have officially incorporated as ENY-ACRL, Inc. we must still apply for federal tax exempt status and begin a new bank account under our incorporated name. I hope you read Teresa Ronning’s letter on incorporation matters that was distributed with the 2000 ENY-ACRL Membership Directory.
If you have not already heard, the Fall 2000 ENY-ACRL Conference will be held on Monday, October 2nd, at Hamilton College. Suzy Szasz Palmer and the Progam Committee will be actively planning the conference over the summer months and we can expect to receive the conference brochure before labor day. Remember to check your mailbox for the brochure or use the newly registered, easy-to-remember ENY-ACRL website for conference information, http://www.enyacrl.org
Have a great summer and I look forward to seeing you at Hamilton College on October 2nd.
Cheers,
Barbara Norelli
ENY-ACRL President
May 15, 2000
Dear ENY/ACRL member:
As we look forward to our annual spring conference on May 19 I want to update the membership on incorporation matters. By "Consent to take action in lieu of an organizational meeting" the incorporators, Teresa Ronning, Susan Zappen and Barbara Via, appointed directors and adopted bylaws as required. The bylaws are included in your updated membership directories distributed at the spring meeting. The bylaw generally follow the bylaws of the unincorporated organization, primarily they have be reorganized. The current directors are:
Susan Zappen, our treasurer, will be opening a bank account with our new corporate federal indentification number. We have engaged a Glens Falls accountant, E. Peter Marshall, CPA, to file for tax exempt status from the IRS. There is a pretty good chance that we will be granted tax exempt status, ALA has tax exempt status as a not-for-profit corporation. ACRL is not incorporated. Susan and I will need to meet with the accountant at least one more time to complete the forms, it can be a slow process for review by the IRS, but I hope next year I can announce that the process is complete. Thank you to Barb Via who undertook this task of incorporation and redrafting the bylaws and to Susan Zappen for her assistance with our tax exempt status and input on revision of the bylaws.
Sincerely,
Teresa Ronning
Dear Mr. Miller,
I am writing in response to your invitation for each ACRL Chapter officer to become a friend of ACRL and to recruit five or more of its members to the Friends. On behalf of the ENY-ACRL Board of Directors we are unanimously declining your invitation. We believe your invitation to be totally misguided. It seems hard to justify spending money on printing expensive solicitations sent to the very people who paid for the paper they are printed on. While we can agree with the basic concept of the Friends and its goals we think seeking outside funding from corporate sponsors a more appropriate course of action for the Friends of ACRL.
ENY-ACRL has just completed the arduous task of incorporation, a formality mandated by ACRL but for which ACRL provided no guidance or assistance. There is precedence with other organizations providing national assistance for this process and yet ACRL chapters had to fly solo in the incorporation process, independently incurring costs for legal and accounting consultants that could have been shared at some level.
ACRL has benefited greatly by the expensive membership dues and exorbitant $350 conference registration fees that its members are asked to pay. In contrast, ENY-ACRL’s annual membership dues are $12 and its conference registration fee has held steady at $30 for several years. We keep these low rates because our chapter fully realizes and appreciates the time, effort and expense that each member is willing to contribute as they write newsletter articles, participate in program planning, present papers, advocate academic library issues, provide leadership, attend committee meetings and address membership issues for the chapter while as librarians often working for modest salaries. To ask anyone to do more than that is in our opinion unwise.
Sincerely,
The Newkirk Research Award, established in 1995, is named for the late Janice Graham Newkirk, former ENY/ACRL Executive Board Member, and CD-ROM Coordinator and Reference Librarian at the University at Albany Library. The fund is supported by a start-up donation from ENY/ACRL, the Newkirk and Graham families, and other private contributions. Administration of the award is handled by a standing committee of ENY/ACRL, consisting of four members of the organization, appointed by the Executive Board for renewable two-year terms. The incumbent Treasurer serves as a non-voting member.
The deadline for applications is September 1, 2000.
The 1999-2000 year was a productive one for the Program Committee, with 2 conferences and a Call for Submissions and Participation successfully planned, organized and achieved. The program theme for both the Fall 1999 and Spring 2000 conferences was academic library partnerships.
The Fall 1999 ENY-ACRL conference, "Hand in Hand: Partnerships in Academe," was held at Siena College on Monday, October 18th. With attendance figures topping 125 and Hannelore Rader, ACRL Librarian of the Year, as keynote speaker, the conference was a rousing success. The evaluation forms attest to this with ratings of "excellent" from over two-thirds of our attendees.
The Spring 2000 ENY-ACRL conference, "Academic Libraries Partnering With Our Communities," was held on May 19th, at Schenectady County Community College. This constituted the first meeting of the chapter since we incorporated. The spring program expanded the focus of partnerships to collaborative efforts between academic libraries and other types of libraries, organizations or institutions. The Call for Submissions and Participation brought 9 speakers to the conference. Unique to this conference, ENY-ACRL reimbursed up to $599. of transporation and travel expenses per accepted paper and College & Undergraduate Libraries offered conference authors the opportunity for publication in its June 2001 issue. Advance registration for the Spring conference totalled 86.
Another unusual aspect of the Spring conference was our pre-conference dinner. In keeping with the theme of partnerships, we had a joint dinner meeting with the Hudson Mohawk Library Association and ENY-ACRL at the Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia, NY on May 18th. Another first, with 52 in attendance, we had a guest dinner speaker, Martin Gomez, Executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Membership in the Program Committee continues to hover around 20 people. Several members held key roles this past year, including Colleen Smith who designed and produced both conference brochures, Colleen Smith and Kristin Strohmeyer authored the Call for Submissions and Participation, Kristin Strohmeyer collected speaker biographies and electronically diseminated the conference brochure, Jackie Coughlan coordinated the submissions for the Call for Submissions and Participation, Lisa Moeckel engineered the "telephone conference call" and administers the Program Committee and Paper Review listservs, Terry Ronning, Colleen Smith, Kristin Strohmeyer, Jackie Coughlan, Lisa Moeckel, Sharon Phillips, Ellie Gossen, Pat Markley, Barbara Walton and Barbara Norelli served as speaker contacts, and our Local Arrangements Chairs, Pat Markley and Barbara Walton, spring and fall respectively. Last, but certainly not least, our Vendor Support liasion, Carol Anne Germain, solicited $2000. for the Fall conference and $1300. for the Spring Conference.
We now have a Local Arrangements Handbook. The Handbook was field tested by 2 local arrangements chairs, Ellen Paterson at SUNY Cortland and Pat Markley at Siena College, sites of our Spring 1999 and Fall 1999 conferences respectively. According to Barbara Walton the handook has proved useful for the Spring 2000 conference and we assume it will continue to develop and improve with each conference.
Planning for the Fall 2000 conference is already underway, with Suzy Szasz Palmer as Program Chair and Kristin Strohmeyer as Local Arrangements Chair. Hamilton College will be the host site of the conference on Monday October 2, 2000. Mark your calendars now!
Barbara Norelli, ENY-ACRL Vice President/Program Chair
Election
The election of Officers and Committee Chairs was held in March. 225 ballots were mailed and 130 completed ballots were returned. The results of the election were as follows:
Librarian of the Year Award
The 2000 Librarian of the Year Award recipient is Michael Engle from Cornell University. The award was presented at the Spring conference on May 19, 2000.
Barbara Via, Past President/Nominations Committee Chair
Our membership presently stands at 287 total, including new members joining at the Spring Conference.
In the hope of eliminating some of the problems we’ve had with receipt of our mailings, last summer I was able to alter the label format from four to five lines to include the library name, after entering or altering the library name for each entry in the database where necessary. This seems to have helped a great deal with receipt problems by providing a more specific location for mailroom sorting and directing on the receiving end. Please do let us know if any problems with receipt are still being experienced.
The membership committee has focused extensively this year on updating each member’s entry in the database. This provides better accuracy in the printed directory as well. A copy of each member’s entry was mailed to the liaison for the institution by members of the membership committee, and corrections were mailed to me. Returns were received from around 50 institutions, which was an excellent response. Thanks to all of you who took the time to assist us with review of the information at your institutions. We could not have been successful in this venture without your help. All necessary corrections were made to the database; thus the information in the printed directory should be very accurate.
I would like to give special thanks to the membership committee for their dedicated service and hard work throughout this year. The members include Jerry Burke (University at Albany), Peter Osterhoudt (College of St. Rose), and Susan Sommer (University at Albany), representing the Capital District Library Council area; Ellie Bolland (Colgate University), representing the Central New York Library Resources Council area; John Thomas (SUNY Canton) representing the North Country Reference and Research Resources Council area; Martha Walker (Cornell University) representing the South Central Regional Library Council area; and Barbara Durniak (Vassar College), representing the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council area. The work this year could not have been accomplished without their time and effort.
The new membership directories for this year are available at the conference today at the registration area. We would ask that one person from each institution pick up the directories, to distribute them back at your institution, either the liaison or anyone else present. Should you find any change needed in your directory entry, correction forms are also available at the same table. It should be noted that any registrations requesting an ENY/ACRL membership received after May 5th could not be included in the published directory of members because of the lead time required for its production.
I would like to welcome Jerry Burke as incoming membership chair, and thank him personally for his willingness to serve. Jerry has been a very valuable member of the membership committee, and I know he will serve you well.
Finally, I’d like to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to serve as membership chair the last four years. I’ve enjoyed the chance to interact with many of you a great deal, and I feel that I have been very enriched through our contact in many ways during my time of service.
Thank you,
Jane Subramanian, Membership Chair
Spring Conference 1999 SUNY Cortland
Fall Conference 1999 Siena College
The efforts of the program and local arrangements committees and your Board have kept conference and operating expenses down while our members and vendors keep our income up. Thank you committee members, members at large, and vendors! Thank you Carol Anne Germain for working with vendors to obtain their support for our conferences.
May 6, 1999 Balances
May 19, 2000 Balances
ENY/ACRL Checking Account:
There are some large bills (conference expenses, membership directory, accountant’s fees relating to incorporation) yet to be paid. Our financial status is very healthy. We have about $11,000 more in our checking account than we did two years ago. This will allow ENY/ACRL to continue to provide stimulating conferences as well as survive incorporation. Professionally, ENY/ACRL membership is a bargain and our superb, affordable conferences rival, if not surpass those on the national front.
Janice Graham Newkirk Funds:
A certificate of deposit for $10,400 was purchased from Marine Midland Bank on May 29, 1996. I added $1,000 to the CD on May 29, 1997, $1,150 on May 29, 1998, and $750 on June 1, 1999. The contributions from 1996-1998 were from Newkirk Products and Raymond Newkirk. The 1999 contribution of $1,100 was received from Newkirk Products and Meredith Butler. In January 2000 we received $1,000 from Newkirk Products. At the end of this month I will add $1,000 to the CD. There is still $350 in the ENY/ACRL checking account from the 1999 contribution. When the next Newkirk Award is made we will use that $350 plus $150 in ENY/ACRL funds for the award.
The CD interest rate is currently at 4.87%. Total interest earned to date is $2,743.21
Susan Zappen, Treasurer
The Fall 1999 newsletter was sent to members on September 24, 1999. The Winter 2000 newsletter went out on January 6, 2000. The Spring 2000 newsletter is distributed later than usual because of the later date for the Spring conference. Longer items, like the one in this newsletter on Project Renaissance, are most welcome. Thanks Trudi for sending it in, and thank you to all the liaisons who submitted information for the Notes from the Field. The deadline for submissions for the next newsletter is August 21.
Beginning with Spring 2000, the newsletter will be distributed by e-mail and posted to the ENY/ACRL web site only, no print copies will be produced. This change should save the organization at least $400 per year. The newsletter will be produced in Word, and saved as HTML, text, and as a Word document. A copy will be sent to Michael Engle to be loaded onto the ENY/ACRL web site. Once the newsletter is up, each member will receive two e-mail messages. One will have the subject "ENY/ACRL newsletter—text", and have the link to the web site plus the text of the newsletter. The other will have the subject "ENY/ACRL newsletter—Word", and have the link plus the newsletter as a Word attachment.
The WWW domain name enyacrl.org was registered on May 8, 2000 at www.register.com for $35 for one year. To my surprise, no questions were asked about my qualifications to register a .org domain, and I did not have to provide a tax ID number or any other proof that we are a non-profit organization. So a .org domain is not necessarily only for a non-profit organization.
With Michael Engle’s help, automatic forwarding was added for an additional $50 per year on May 11. Anyone may now go to www.enyacrl.org or enyacrl.org and be automatically linked to our web site. A major benefit of paying for forwarding is that the ENY/ACRL web page may reside on any server, and still be accessed with the same enyacrl.org URL. I hope the new address will be easy to remember, and will help increase use of the chapter’s web site. I would like to thank Michael for the great job he does to maintain our web site.
Steve Black, Communications Chair
Trudi E. Jacobson
Coordinator of User Education Programs and Project Librarian
Four years ago, the University at Albany instituted a new first-year experience program entitled Project Renaissance. Project Renaissance is designed to offer students the feeling of a small college experience within the larger university setting. The yearlong living/learning experience emphasizes inquiry, community service work, and the development of technological and writing skills. Project Renaissance has enrolled as few as 200 and as many as 600 students per year, but now aims for an average enrollment of 400. Students are selected based on their expressed interest, but efforts are made to have the participants resemble a microcosm of the freshman class. Students take six credits in common each semester, spending half of their time in large group lectures and the other half in small-group discussion sessions. Teaching focuses on themes of human identity and technology, although there are a number of specialized class sections connected to pre-professional programs such as health, business, and law. The curriculum fulfills four courses within the general education requirements, as well as the lower-division writing-intensive requirement.
Project Renaissance has served as a primary vehicle for library instruction amongst first-year stduents at the University. The Coordinator of User Education Programs has been involved in planning Project Renaissance from its inception, and has been designated Project Librarian. Library instruction has always been considered a desirable component of the program, although its nature has changed from year to year.
Sessions that librarians have typically offered over the years include:
Each of the Evaluating Information sessions is adapted to the content of a particular class. In a class studying famous American trials, for instance, students targeted Web sites on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Students explored three Web sites: one emotionally supporting the Rosenbergs, a factual site written by a law school faculty member, and a third site that eventually revealed itself to be the creation of a team of high school students.
Librarians have also developed entirely new classes based upon the needs of particular instructors and class assignments. One instructor asked a librarian to emphasize critical thinking when teaching students in his human diversity class how to find multicultural resources on the Web. Another asked the University archivist to provide an overview of the institution’s Special Collections and Archives as well as an introduction to historical resources.
Project Renaissance has been the focus of some experimentation in methods of providing instruction. The program was at peak enrollment (600) during 1998-1999, and librarians were stretched thin in order to provide the two standard classes for each section, as well as occasional specialized sessions. To address this problem, the Project Librarian and a colleague, Carol Anne Germain, wrote and mounted a tutorial covering the same material as the librarian-taught Access Points for Information class. Half the students in the generic Project Renaissance classes used the Web-based tutorial, while the other half were instructed by a librarian. In conjunction with developing the Web-based instructional module, we used pre- and post-tests to compare the effectiveness of the tutorial with in-person instruction. Analysis of the mean number of correct responses on the pre- and post-tests yielded a statistically significant difference, regardless of instructional format, indicating that students had learned from the library research. Statistical analysis further indicated that Web-based instruction was as effective as in-person instruction, based upon the number of correct answers (Germain, Jacobson and Kaczor, 2000). This rather surprised us, but it has made us less uneasy in using the same tutorial with other lower level courses.
If you would like more information about Project Renaissance, check out their Web page at: http://www.albany.edu/projren/ The original version of the Web-based tutorial (used for our research project) can be found at: http://www.albany.edu/~libclass/. The current version, revised due to changes in our catalog and database interfaces, is at: http://www.albany.edu/library/divs/usered/tut/
Reference List
Germain, C. A., Jacobson, T. E., & Kaczor, S. (2000). A comparison of the effectiveness of presentation formats for instruction: Teaching first-year students. College & Research Libraries, 61 (1), 65-72.
Kurt Bogart, who was not only the most senior librarian at Ithaca College, but the longest serving employee on campus, officially retires in May 2000. He is currently enjoying a terminal sabbatical year in his new home in South Carolina, which is close to three of his four children. He retires as an Associate Professor. Kurt's roots with the college extend back to its beginnings as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Kurt's father, Lynn Bogart, was an early violin student of Grant Egbert, IC's founder, and went on to become a professor of violin at the conservatory. Kurt was a student at Ithaca College in the 1950s. He met his wife Sara while in college, and after Kurt's graduation in 1958 both became teachers in Pennsylvania public schools. Kurt taught French and Spanish, and Sarah taught music. The Bogarts spent only a few years away from Ithaca. After Kurt received his MLS from Syracuse University, he returned to the college as a librarian in July of 1966. He has been at the college ever since, taking one sabbatical leave in Puerto Rico. When Kurt joined the library staff, he was the reference department. As an indication of how the Ithaca College Library has changed since then, there are now seven librarians in the reference department. Kurt's first year was also the library's first year in new quarters in the Gannett Center, one of the first buildings completed on Ithaca's new campus on South Hill. As a reference librarian Kurt belonged to the school of generalists and amazed both students and colleagues with his warehouse of facts, knowledge of the library's collections, and stories and information about the college. We wish him well.
Sharon Phillips, Access Services Librarian for the Sage Colleges, has recently been appointed to CDLC's Direct Access Program (DAP) Committee.
Liz Strickland has joined the Information Resources and Delivery team as a part-time Reference Librarian. Liz is a former Sojourner Truth Library acquisitions intern and a recent graduate of the M.L.S program at SUNY Albany.
The Sojourner Truth Library now offers off campus access to all of its online databases through the implementation of a library proxy server. Members of the campus community are validated using their college email accounts.
The Facilities and Collections team has also recently completed a major renovation of the library's ground floor. New carpeting and conference rooms now compliment the library's bound periodical collection.
Natalie Sturr and Chris Hebblethwaite wrote a successful SCAP proposal for an adaptive computer workstation. The adaptive computer will assist students who have learning, visual or mobility impairments access the Internet from the library's reference area.
Cathy Reed and Sara Davenport have co-authored the article: "American Sign Language on the Web: A Guide to the Best Sites for Your Library." Internet Reference Services Quarterly 4.4 (1999) : in press.
Cathy Reed was elected to a three year term on the Nylink Resource Sharing Services Advisory Group.
PEOPLE
John Olsen was hired as Maps/GIS Librarian, effective June 1, 2000.
Peter Graham, University Librarian, attended the fall 1999 meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information on December 13-14 in Phoenix. He was a panelist on the opening plenary which reviewed CNI's first decade and discussed priorities and challenges for CNI in the next period.
Peter Graham, University Librarian, has been asked to serve on an ad hoc ALA committee, the Electronic Meeting Participation Task Force. Its charge is to help ALA headquarters provide more effective electronic assistance to the membership (Web pages, listservs. Archives of lists, directories and the like) and to investigate possibilities for increasing membership participation by virtual means (e-conferences, video streaming, audio, committee chat rooms, etc.).
Terry Keenan, Special Collections Librarian, was promoted from associate librarian to librarian.
Janet Pease, Science Librarian, was promoted from senior assistance librarian to associate librarian.
Pamela Thomas, User Education Librarian, was promoted from senior assistance librarian to associate librarian.
Mark Weimer, Curator of Special Collections, is currently serving as an advisor to California filmmaker Frank Christopher, who is producing a 60-minute documentary film entitled Heaven on Earth: Love and Conflict in the Oneida Community. Syracuse University Library holds the definitive collection of research materials documenting the history of this radical 19th century utopian community. This film is being made under the auspices of the New York Historical Association with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities' Film and Radio Grant Program. Mark was also recently honored by the board of trustees of the Oneida Community Mansion House, Inc. (OCMH) for a decade of service as a founding trustee to that organization. OCMH is a not-for-profit foundation established to preserve and interpret the home of the Oneida Community.
PROGRAMS AND SERVICES
In January, the Library implemented a new library service for SU distance education students. Now Independent Study Degree Program (ISDP) students within the U.S. and Canada can use an electronic request form to request that books be mailed to their home. This is in addition to the article delivery that had been implemented previously.
On February 4, 2000 an all-day Copyright Town Meeting focusing on "Cyberspace Law: Copyright and Access" was held at the Sheraton University Hotel. Hosted by Syracuse University Library with the support of Cornell University Library and the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage, the meeting featured a copyright workshop with Kenny Crews, Indiana University, and two panel discussions.
PEOPLE
Yolanda Hollingsworth's paper, "An Introduction to Web Security in Academic Libraries" was accepted by the National Online Meeting (NOM2k) for publication in Proceedings 2000. The presentation will be on May 18th.
Deborah Bernnard and Yolanda Hollingsworth's article, "Teaching World Wide Web Based FullText Databases: New concepts from a new technology", is in Reference and User Services Quarterly volume 39, number 1, 2000.
Mary Jane Brustman has been awarded Continuing Appointment and promoted to Associate Librarian.
Meredith Butler, Dean and Director of Libraries at the University at Albany has been appointed to the Association of Research Libraries Membership Committee. Dean Butler has also been appointed to the inaugural editorial board of a new journal devoted to libraries and higher education. The as yet untitled journal is being launched as the alternative to the Journal of Academic Librarianship and will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. She presented "Women and Money: Getting and Giving our Share" at the National Association of Women in Higher Education Annual Conference on February 24, 2000.
Laura Cohen spoke at the Computers in Libraries 2000 conference in Washington, D.C. on March 15 on "Teaching How to Search on a Mutating Web." She also spoke at the inaugural meeting of The Upper Hudson Library System Web Interest Group in Colonie on March 23 on "Notes from the Trenches: Tips for Designing Effective Web Sites." Laura was featured in an article by Joyce Kasman Valenza, "Directories can eclipse search engines," in The Philadelphia Inquirer on February 24." Her Internet Tutorials site continues to garner awards, including a recent Andover.Net Tech Sighting of the Day, which resulted in over 600 visits to her site on that day.
Carol Anne Germain, Trudi E. Jacobson, and Sue A. Kaczor co-authored an article, "A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Presentation Formats for Instruction: Teaching First-Year Students," that appeared in the January 2000 issue of College & Research Libraries.
Regina Hall-Oppenheim was appointed User Instruction/Reference Librarian at the University Library on January 20, 2000.
Yolanda Hollingsworth is now at the new Science Library.
Trudi Jacobson gave two workshops at Brandeis University on March 17. One was for faculty and librarians, "How Do You Teach Students to Construct Interdisciplinary Knowledge," and was presented with noted interdisciplinarity expert Julie Klein of Wayne State University. The other, for librarians, was on active learning and teaching techniques.
Barbara Kemp resigned effective March 17, 2000 to take the position of Assistant Dean for Public Services at the University of Houston.
Deborah M. LaFond, Mary K. Van Ullen, and Richard D. Irving published "Diversity in Collection Development: Comparing Access Strategies to Alternative Press Periodicals" in College & Research Libraries 61(4): 136-144, March 2000.
Michael Matis has been appointed Reference/Information Technology Librarian at Dewey Library as of February 10.
Greg Sapp is the new Head of the Science Library effective March 17, 2000.
Mary Ullen is the President of the Capital District Business Librarians, which is a membership committee of Capital District Library Council.
Barbara Via is the Interim Head of Dewey Library. She also teaches the reference course at the School of Information Science and Policy.
PROGRAMS/SERVICES
The University at Albany Libraries will be hosting a Victory Celebration on May 3, 2000 for donors to the successful Campaign for Albany's Libraries. More than $3.8 million dollars were raised to complete the equipping and furnishing of the new library and renovate the University Library. This total includes a $500,000 Challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation.
The M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives has a new home and a new web site. The department's wonderful new quarters are on the third floor of the New Library Building on the University's Uptown Campus. Research Room hours are 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. Visitors are welcome. The web site is at http://www.albany.edu/library/divs/speccoll/ .
Nancy MacKechnie, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts is retiring and moving to Virginia at the end of May.
Robin Walsh, Reference Librarian and coordinator of INNOPAC and library computers has recently left for a job directing the computer literacy program and the genealogical and local history collections in the library at nearby Ulster Community College.
We share with deep sadness the news of the death, after a lengthy illness, of Mary Lou Jeanneney on February 10, 2000. She had been a reference librarian here at Vassar College Libraries since 1984. Before that she had been a librarian at the United States Army Hospital in Tokyo, Japan during the Korean Conflict, at the Levittown Public Library, and the New York Public Library.
The libraries renovation and construction project continues. In late January and February the new Reserve Area and adjacent reading room, and new stack areas were opened; Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Interlibrary Loan staff moved back to campus from the offsite Libraries Annex; and the Reference Room and Current Periodicals area moved to temporary locations. Faculty, students, and staff are coping well with the continuing dislocation and are pleased with the new areas and services now available to all. We'll keep you posted as to the official completion and opening celebration date.
Inquiries for those interested in positions available at Vassar College Libraries may be directed to Sabrina Pape, Director of the Libraries.
| ENY-ACRL Home |
Steve Black
Communications Chair
Eastern New York Chapter
Association of College and Research Libraries
URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/acrl/spring00.html