Annual Reports:
President's Report by
Kristin Strohmeyer
The past year has certainly passed quickly. ENYACRL has seen numerous changes this year, and it has certainly not been an easy year for the Board. This fall, we saw the departure of Suzy Palmer, long time Program committee member and current Past President, the resignation of Deb Schmidle, Government Relations Chair, and the rescheduling of our spring conference and business meeting.
As I mentioned in a memo to the liaisons, the decision to reschedule our conference was not made lightly. There was quite a bit of heated email discussion on the Board, after the decision, but it was agreed that this was the right decision. Scheduling our conferences gets harder every time, and many unforeseen difficulties made our date no longer a viable option. Inga Barnello is already planning the fall conference, and I look forward to seeing all of you there.
Speaking of Inga, I must thank and congratulate everyone who ran for office. The winners of our 2003 elections are as follows: Vice President/President Elect/Program Planning Chair, Inga Barnello from LeMoyne College; Secretary, Martha Walker from Cornell University; and Communications Chair, Steve Black, from College of St. Rose. We also welcome Mike McLane in his new position as President of our organization. I now move to the Past President seat, where I will conduct next year's elections and Librarian of the Year award. Please start thinking now of people to nominate!
We will be announcing the Librarian of the Year award soon, and plan on presenting the winner with the award at the fall conference. Information regarding the business meeting is forthcoming as well.
Enjoy your summers, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Vice President/Program Chair Report by
Michael McLane
The Fall 2002 Conferences of the Eastern New York Chapter of ACRL was held on
October 17-18, 2002 at the Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center.
Entitled "New York Realities, New York Relationships," the Conference
was attended by over 70 participants. Highlights of the Conference included a
pre-conference dinner and talk by Patricia Wand, University Librarian at
American University and member of the ACRL Board and Executive Committee; a
presentation by the leaders of the New York State Higher Education Initiative,
and participation in the Syracuse University 21st Century Librarian Award
Luncheon and Ceremony. Evaluations of the Conference were generally positive.
The Planning process for the Spring 2003 Conference was slow and uneven. The theme of the Conference was chosen (2003: A Library (Space) Odyssey), as well as the keynote speaker and host for the conference (SUNY Institute of Technology in Utica, and its new library, open in March 2003). It was finally decided to postpone the conference to the Fall of 2003 in order to ensure the quality of the conference.
A problem for the Conference Committee this year was the active participation of only a few members of the Planning Committee, either in person or electronically. I recommend that the Committee be reconstituted, retaining really interested members of the current committee as well as recruiting new members who will actively participate.
ALA/ACRL National
As Vice-President of ENY/ACRL, I attended the Chapters Council at the ALA annual conference in Atlanta in June 2002 along with other chapter officers. I represented the ENY/ACRL Board at the Chapter Council meeting at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia in January 2003, and attended the luncheon and meeting at which the ACRL presidential candidates presented their platforms.
Other
In March 2003, I represented ENY/ACRL at a Library Education and Training Summit held in Albany, the purpose of which was to improve communication and coordination among organizations offering professional development and training for librarians in New York. One possible outcome will be a statewide calendar of library continuing education events.
Past President/Nominations Committee Chair Report
(Ed. note--the chair remained officially vacant after Suzy Szasz Palmer's move to the University of Louisville. Thanks to Kristin Strohmeyer for adding the duties of that position to her already full plate, including writing this report!).
I would like to publicly thank the Nominations committee members, Inga Barnello and Jane Subramanian, for their diligence in compiling our slate of candidates. I would also like to give a special thanks to those candidates willing to run for office/chair positions, Pauline Lynch Shostack and Deborah Bernnard. I would like to encourage all members of ENYACRL to consider running for a position on the Board, or being a part of a committee. It is a fun and fulfilling way to stay professionally active with local colleagues.
The 2002 ENY/ACRL election was completed in April and the results were posted to the ENY/ACRL listserv, forum@enyacrl.org. We received an over forty percent return rate on ballots, for which we took last year's recommendations and put the voting instructions on both the ballot and the accompanying election memo. After examining the by-laws of the organization, it was determined that a double-envelope system was unnecessary, and may have added to past election return confusion.
Election 2003 Results:
VP/Program Chair/President elect: Inga Barnello, LeMoyne College
Secretary: Martha Walker, Cornell University
Communications Committee Chair: Steve Black, College of St. Rose
The complete 2003-2004 roster of ENY/ACRL Officers & Committee Chairs is on the ENY/ACRL web site at http://www.enyacrl.org/officers.html.
Treasurer's Report by Sheldon Wein
Through conscientious management ENY/ACRL is financially stable. Our checking account balance as of March 31, 2003 was $22,672.12. ENY/ACRL gave $1206.18 in awards and honorarium in 2002. The checking account includes $1000 in Newkirk funds that are also included in the Newkirk Funds balance. The Janice Graham Newkirk Research Fund balance as of March 31, 2003 was $21,566.08. Two Newkirk Fund awards were presented in 2002.
Spring Conference 2002, Cornell University
Fall Conference 2002, Syracuse University
The incorporation process begun in 2001 was completed in 2002 when we received word from the Internal Revenue Service that we were granted incorporation as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Upon gaining this status, an application for tax exemption was than filed in 2002 with the New York State Tax Department. Our application was found to be in compliance with NYS tax laws and we were granted tax exemption.
Our financial status is very healthy and this will allow ENY/ACRL to continue to provide vibrant programs for its members.
Communications Committee Report by Steve Black
The activities of the Communications Committee are to electronically publish 3 newsletters a year, maintain our web site, http://enyacrl.org, and moderate our e-mail discussion forum, forum@enyacrl.org. Our web site is averaging 1496 requests for pages per month (down from 1718 requests last year). Since September 1, 2001, our conference announcements were viewed 766 times, and our newsletters were viewed 1995 times (up from 651 times last year). It appears people read the newsletter, after all! The stats also show that 5,290 distinct hosts were served, so it appears that folks other than our members view our pages. Special thanks to Bern Mulligan for tracking and compiling the monthly web site use statistics for us.
Our moderated discussion group at forum@enyacrl.org remains very quiet. John Henderson has done a fine job as moderator. He reports that we currently have 96 subscribers to the forum. We encourage all members to subscribe! Instructions are at http://www.enyacrl.org/list.html.
Membership Committee Report by Kate Moss
We currently have 258 members. Membership is down slightly from last year (274) probably due to loss of members who might have joined or renewed with their spring conference registrations.
As some of us retire, change professions or move to other locations, I feel that we need to reach out to our future colleagues, thus my efforts to recruit new members have been focused on Library and Information Science students. Like many of you, I joined ENY/ACRL as a student; and I discovered that ENY/ACRL meetings are interesting, inexpensive and a great way to meet local academic librarians.
Obviously, holding our fall conference at Syracuse University was helpful in this regard. I have also met with the student chapter of ALA at the University at Albany to let them know about ENY/ACRL, to encourage them to join. Mentoring new academic librarians is a job that we all share, so I hope that those of you who have contact with students will tell them about ENY/ACRL.
I also find that students, and, in fact, all of our new members, can offer a renewed energy and innovation to our organization. Our meetings are not as intimidating as those on a national scale. Being smaller, each member has the chance to be more involved on a creative level. However, along with that comes increased responsibility, as each member has more of an impact on the whole.
With that in mind, I hope that those of you who have been members for a long time, but who have not been actively involved will consider taking a more active role in making ENY/ACRL everything that you want it to be. Each of you has something to offer the rest of us, something that only you can offer. Please contact me, or any member of the board, to let us know about your ideas or suggestions, or to find out how to be included in the more creative side of ENY/ACRL.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to interact with many of you in my role as membership chair, and look forward to my upcoming second year of service in that role.
Government Relations Committee Report by Michael Matis
The USA PATRIOT Act has been a major source of concern in libraries when it lessened the standards for conducting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) searches of library records. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate to restore the higher standards required for a FISA search of library and bookstore records and to increase reporting and oversight of FISA searches. In the House, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced H.R. 1157, the "Freedom to Read Protection Act," on March 6th, 2003. H.R. 1157 would restore the requirements the FBI needed to meet to conduct a FISA search to pre-PATRIOT ACT standards.
In the Senate, S. 1158, the "Library and Bookseller Protection Act" was introduced by Senator Boxer on May 23, 2003. S. 1158 would 1- exempt bookstores and libraries from FISA court orders (Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act] requiring the production of tangible things for foreign intelligence investigations; and 2- exempt libraries from being considered "wire or electronic communication service providers" under Section 2709 of Title 18 of the US Code, which provides for counterintelligence access to certain records. Also, S. 436, the "Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act of 2003, " was introduced by Senators Leahy, Grassley and Specter on February 25, 2003. The impact of S. 436 is to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to improve the administration and oversight of foreign intelligence surveillance. There is a provision that requires a separate statement of all requests for FISA searches of institutions operating as public libraries or serving as libraries of secondary schools or institutions of higher education.
You can read the bill text and get the current status of any bill in Congress by going to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and entering the bill number in the Bill Number text box located under the words: Search Bill Text 108th Congress (2003-2004). Additional information is available at:
The Total Information Awareness (TIA) project's name has been changed to the "Terrorist Information Awareness." TIA is a project initiated by the US Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Awareness Office, headed by headed by Admiral (retired) John Poindexter who is responsible for developing the project. TIA is designed to protect US citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) TIA is designed to capture the "information signature" of people so that the government can track potential terrorists and criminals involved in "low-intensity/low-density" forms of warfare and crime. The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible and using computer algorithms and human analysis to detect potential activity. Another way to state this is this project is an effort to "connect the dots" in disparate intelligence sources to prevent future terrorist attacks. One major concern about TIA is that owing to "function creep," dossiers will be developed on US citizens engaging in lawful activity.
ENY/ACRL Librarian of the Year: Lynne King
Lynne King, from Sage Colleges, is our 2003 Librarian of the Year. Lynne has a long history with ENYACRL, serving as President in 1996/97, and going on to lead ACRL Chapters Council in 1999/2000. Quoting from her nomination, Lynne creates an atmosphere of professionalism, confidence, and service and instills in all people working with her, a desire for excellence. We will be honoring Lynne further at the Fall 2003 conference.
The Janice Graham Newkirk Research Award provides funding for members of ENY/ACRL
to pursue research on any aspect of library technology, reference service,
or bibliographic instruction. A monetary award will be made annually, with
the amount of the award based on the growth of the fund. The minimum
amount will be $350. The award can be used to finance travel or research
costs, including such things as hiring a research assistant, the purchase of
computer hardware, software, or supplies needed to carry out the research
project, or the cost of conference attendance. Recipients will be
selected on the basis of a well-defined proposal and how well the project fits
one of the topic areas.
The 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. The fund is supported by a
start-up donation from ENY/ACRL, the Newkirk and Graham families, and other
private contributions. Further instructions and the application form are
available at http://enyacrl.org/newkirk.html
Notes from the Field
Albany Law School (reprinted from Colleen Smith's SERIALST posting May 12, 2003)
Ellen Rappaport, the Head of Technical Services at Albany Law School until very recently, passed away on May 12. She first came to Albany Law School in January 1993 and has made enormous contributions to this library and to the larger world of librarianship. She was intensely committed to the development of clear library standards, and has worked on NISO and CONSER projects. She will be remembered by many in the library community as a wonderful colleague, mentor, and friend. The following appeared in today's issue of the Schenectady Daily Gazette.
Albany -- Ellen Coolman Rappaport, 58, of Davis Avenue in Albany, died Monday morning May 12, 2003, at her home.
Ellen was born in New York City and resided briefly in New Jersey, later moving to Norwalk, CT, where she spent most of her childhood as well as where she graduated from high school. She had been a Capital Region resident since 1980. She was a graduate of the University of Rochester and received her graduate degree in library science from Syracuse University. She had been employed as a librarian at Syracuse University and later was employed in the same capacity at the State University College at Cortland. She also worked for SUNY/OCLC Library Network. She was later employed by OCLC in Albany. Ellen had also been employed by the Ameritech Information Systems and from 1993 to March of 2003 she was employed by the the Albany Law School as a technical services librarian, later becoming head of technical services. She was a member of Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany, NY, and was active with the Helderberg Madrigal Singers. In Syracuse, she was an active member of Schola Cantorum and participated in Schola's Summer Workshops after she moved to Albany. She also was involved with many library professional activities and was a member of many state, national and law library associations. She was also a member of a cancer support group sponsored by the First Unitarian Society of Albany.
College of Saint Rose
Steve Black presented a poster with Saint Rose colleague Penny Axelrod, Ed.D., "Classroom Instructors as Liberal Education Outcomes Assessors" at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) conference, General Education: Goals, Strategies, and Assessments for Powerful Learning in Philadelphia, PA, Feb. 27-March 1, 2003.
Cortland, State University of New York College at
Gretchen Douglas is on sabbatical pursuing Microsoft certification.
Dave Ritchie will be embarking on a sabbatical project concerned with developing his skills creating useful Aleph reports from January through June, 2004.
Margaret Anderson left Memorial Library May 16th for a temporary full time position at Tompkins Cortland Community College.
Lorraine Melita presented Partnering for Reading with Emilie Kudela, Associate Professor at SUNY Cortland and Jami Bisesi, graduate student at Cortland at NYSAEYC (New York State Association for the Education of Young Children), March 27-29, 2003 Saratoga Springs, NY.
Lorraine Melita participated in the Cheney Educational Issues Conference at the Early Childhood Care and Education: Partnering for Success presentation On Tuesday April 1, 2003, at SUNY Cortland.
On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, Lorraine Melita participated in Scholar's Day at SUNY Cortland with Emilie Kudela, Associate Professor at SUNY Cortland and Jami Bisesi, graduate student at Cortland in The Children's Reading Area: A Hands-on, Working Resource for Students, Educators, and Families.
Ellen Paterson will be on sabbatical from July 20, 2003 to January 20, 2004.
Dave Ritchie, Ellen McCabe and Karen Coombs went to Albany on April 8, 2003 and advocated successfully for SUNY Libraries in the first ever SUNY Librarians Advocacy Day.
Donna Keane retired from the Bibliographic Services (Technical Services) area at the end of March.
Memorial Library sponsored a Food for Fines program from 4/7 through 4/20. In collaboration with the Cortland County Nutrition Program, Helping Hands Food Pantry and the Honors Program students, community members and students could "pay" their fines with food.
Memorial Library conducted a LibQual+ survey of users from April 6th through 25th. The library offered a number of local prizes for both faculty and students in addition to the national prize of a personal digital assistant (hand held computer).
As a part of the Long Range Planning process, Memorial Library received $20,000 for wireless classroom equipment and hubs. Hubs will be placed in the Teaching Materials Center, the reference area and a portion of the stack area. Up to nineteen portable computers will be purchased.
A $500 grant for the Children's' Reading Center in the Teaching Materials Center has been received from Wal-Mart.
Karen A. Coombs presented "Harnessing XML and Database-driven Content for Library Websites" at Computers in Libraries 2003, Washington DC.
Amy Dembrosky is the new Faculty Trainer.
Ithaca College
Lisabeth Chabot has been named the new College librarian at Ithaca College and will begin her duties in late July. Ms. Chabot comes to Ithaca after serving as college librarian at Mary Baldwin College since 1993.
New York State Library
Retirements from the State Library: Richard Andress (Public Services), Robert Allan Carter (Public Services), Elizabeth Closson (Library Operations).
State Librarian Janet M. Welch received the Distinguished Public Service Award of the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy in May. The award is given annually for exemplary public service in the areas of librarianship, archival, and and information services or information management and policy.
NOVEL database As many of you probably know, Dialog@CARL ceased to exist as of April 1, and has been replaced with ReferenceLink, which has similar content. It's mostly newspapers, including full text of the New York Times for the last 90 days. The State Library has also added Twayne's Author Series which has information on literary biography and criticism. If libraries have any questions about getting access to this or other NOVEL databases, they can visit http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/library/novel/database/index.html
RPI
We welcome our new Digital Resources Librarian, Patricia Hults. Patricia previously served as Database Manager at the Schenectady Museum, and, prior to that, as Head of Public Services at the Van Wagenen Library at SUNY Cobleskill.
Fran Scott, Architecture and Fine Arts Librarian, currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the Western New York Chapter of the Art Libraries Society. In March, Fran attended the national conference of the Art Libraries' Society in Baltimore and in May she presented reports on projects and chapter activities at the joint conference of ARLIS/WNY; ARLIS/NE; and the Upstate NY chapter of the Visual Resources Association.
Jeanne Keefe, Visual Resources Librarian, currently serves as Vice President for Conference Arrangements of the national Visual Resources Association and attended their annual conference in Houston, TX in April.
Donna Hopkins, Engineering Librarian, published an article "Searching for Graphic Content in USPTO Trademark Databases" in World Patent Information, Volume 25, Issue 2, June 2003.
Donna, together with Colette O. Holmes, Management Librarian, and W. George Biggar, Senior Systems Administrator, presented a paper on "Customizing Tutorials: YourTILT" at the 18th Computers in Libraries conference in Washington DC in March. Their paper will be published in the proceedings of the conference.
Colette continues to be active on the CDLC Business Librarians Group Program Committee, and in March attended their program on Communicating across Cultures.
Connie Powell, Physical Sciences Librarian, attended the symposium on Scholarly Publishing and Archiving on the Web: New Opportunities at U Albany on April 7. Connie is researching the history of the National Bureau of Standards/ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and in May was a guest of the NIST Gaithersburg office and Lisa Greenhouse, Historian for NIST.
Mary Anne Waltz, Coordinator for Reference and Instructional Services, served as a Subject Advisor for the recently published The best books for academic libraries, Volume 1 : Science, Technology, and Agriculture, published by The Best Books, Inc.
Michele Prendergast, Departmental Specialist, Interlibrary Loan, is the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Service Award from the Capital District Library Council (CDLC) Committee on Interlibrary Loan (COIL). Michele has also been awarded a scholarship from the Capital Area Library Assistants (CALA) to support her continuing education at Empire State College. Congratulations to Michele.
John Townsend named NYSHEI Executive Director
The Founding Board of the New York State Higher Education Initiative (NYSHEI) is pleased to announce that John Townsend has been appointed as the organization's first Executive Director, effective March 17, 2003. According to NYSHEI board co-convener Loretta Ebert, Director of Libraries at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, "John has the breadth of experience, knowledge and enthusiasm to successfully promote this new organization, interface with external funding and sponsoring agencies, and develop creative partnerships with other initiatives in libraries, higher education, scholarly communication and information technology. [he] has articulated a compelling vision for promoting research, enhancing advocacy, and leveraging economic resources across the higher education information infrastructure in New York."
Before moving to NYSHEI, Townsend served as Director of Information Technology Services at SUNY Cobleskill. His previous positions include Program Administrator for the New York State Conservation/Preservation Program at the State Library in Albany, and Head of the Conservation Treatments laboratory at the New York Public Library, as well as other library positions at the Julliard School, the Population Reference Bureau in Washington D.C., and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Library.
In addition, Townsend has been a self-employed consultant for strategic planning and evaluation. His clients have included the New York State Library, the New York State Archives and Records Administration, the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), the World Bank Global Environmental Facility and the National Library of Indonesia. He attended graduate school at Columbia University, Catholic University of America and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he also completed his undergraduate degree.
In his new role, Townsend will be responsible for leading, developing and managing the programs and services of NYSHEI for its membership. At the Inaugural NYSHEI Membership Meeting on April 21, he stressed the increasingly important role of libraries in higher education as a result of the transformations of the digital information age and outlined an agenda for the Initiative's formative period that includes bBuilding effective collaborative strategies for the organization, maximizing effective use of existing collections, realizing economies of scale in deploying electronic resources, and addressing key issues related to scholarly communications
Based in Albany, the New York State Higher Education Initiative was established with the support of 127 founding members, including all of SUNY (State University of New York) and CUNY (City University of New York) plus 44 private colleges and universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Colgate, Syracuse, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Union College, Vassar and many others. (A complete list of members is available at the NYSHEI web site, www.nyshei.org.)
ConnectNY
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant of $40,000 to support planning for a library consortium that includes St. Lawrence University, Colgate University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Vassar College. The project, called ConnectNY, allows the institutions to share library holdings, making the collections of all five readily available to students, faculty, and staff. The ConnectNY Union Catalog and statewide delivery system became available in March 2002. With the assistance of the grant from the Mellon Foundation, ConnectNY will now undertake a series of comprehensive discussions on all aspects of the consortium, including governance, long-term financial sustainability, technical viability, and membership growth. Members of the consortium will work with consultants and institutions that use similar arrangements in forming the plans. In addition to vastly increasing the number of offerings available to library users, the new system speeds delivery of volumes from participating institutions. Library users may borrow materials from ConnectNY libraries by requesting them online, and items are then delivered to their own library for pickup, usually within 48 hours. "On behalf of the five New York State institutions that comprise the ConnectNY consortium, I want to thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for this grant," said St. Lawrence President Daniel F. Sullivan. "This assistance will help to ensure that private colleges and universities will have a voice in determining how library resources in New York State are shared in the future."
Siena College
John Vallely is serving as an Adjunct Professor in the College's History Department. John teached a three credit course, US MILITARY HISTORY, every semester.
Sean P. Conley is the new Reference and Media Services Librarian at Siena College.
Skidmore College
Ruth Copans, College Librarian, has been promoted to the rank of Librarian.
Susan Zappen, Associate College Librarian for Collections was on sabbatical during the Fall 2002 semester and Barbara Norelli, Social Sciences and Instructional Services Librarian is currently on sabbatical until September.
Andy Ashton, a 2002 graduate of the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy, is Skidmore's new Systems Librarian.
SUNY Cobleskill
April Davies, in collaboration with Holly Heller Ross, presented at SUNYLA 2003 a poster session entitled "Turning the Tide of Plagiarism". Van Wagenen Library conducted a LibQual+ survey of its users this spring with the help of Kelly MacWatters. A number of local prizes were awarded.
Francine Apollo presented at CIT2003 in Potsdam with my colleague Dr. Sandra Malcolm from our Early Childhood Education Division on "Empowering Students to Develop Research Skills: Librarian-Instructor Collaboration". Francine then went to SUNYLA at Stony Brook and presented "On Information Literacy: Librarians and Classroom Instructors Collaborate".
SUNY Oswego
Elizabeth Young has been promoted to Associate Librarian, effective September 1, 2003.
SUNY Plattsburgh
Carla List-Handley was appointed SUNY Distinguished Librarian by the SUNY Board of Trustees. List-Handley becomes the third Distinguished Librarian in the SUNY system.
Susan Travis, Adjunct Librarian, has accepted a position at Chester College of New England in Chester, NH.
Holly Heller-Ross, Associate Librarian, has a number of accomplishments. She was awarded a fellowship at Plattsburgh State's Institute for Ethics and Public Life; her research project dealt with academic honesty as an applied ethical value, anti-plagiarism curriculum and institutional response. Heller-Ross also published "Assessing Outcomes with Nursing Research Assignments and Citation Analysis of Student Bibliographies" in The Reference Librarian, vol. 77, 2002. She was a co-presenter at several conferences: SUNY Fact CIT (Conference on Instructional Technology): "Information Literacy? It's already in there!" with Danielle Drasser, May 2003, Potsdam, NY; SUNY General Education Conference: "Faculty and Librarian Collaboration: Implementing the information management competency" Presentation with Trudi Jacobson. April 2003, Syracuse, NY; and "Turning the Tide of Plagiarism" Poster Session with April Davies at SUNYLA 2003, at SUNY Stony Brook, June 2003. Additionally, Heller-Ross offered two Instructional Technology Workshops for faculty during the spring and summer semesters.
Carla Hendrix, Associate Librarian, received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Librarianship. Hendrix joined the Feinberg Library faculty in 1989 and currently serves as the Coordinator of Collection Development and Management.
SUNY Potsdam
Nancy Alzo presented a session "Copyright - The Rights of the Information Consumer" at the recent SUNY Conference on Instructional Technologies for 2003 held at SUNY Potsdam on May 28th-30th, 2003. Nancy was also promoted to Associate Librarian this spring.
Edward Komara, Crane Librarian at SUNY Potsdam, was contributor of an essay and catalogue in the book accompanying the 7 CD set Charley Patton: Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, released in October 2001 on Revenant Records. The set covered the complete performances and musical times of Charley Patton, a leading Mississippi Delta bluesman from the 1910s through the 1930s, whose records are revered by fans of blues and rock. In February 2003 the set won the Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) for Best Historical Album.
Jane Subramanian was asked by the Music Library Association to chair their Best of Chapter Committee for the forthcoming year. The Best of Chapter competition receives nominations from regional chapters throughout the country affiliated with the national organization for outstanding presentations given at their regional conference. Just two presentations are selected from the nominations received for presentation at a special session at the national MLA conference held in February each year. She also presented another guest lecture to the cataloging class at SUNY Albany's library school in March and was one of four SUNY Potsdam faculty inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society on campus this spring.
Rebecca Thompson co-presented with SUNY Potsdam colleague Justin Sipher a session "Building and Assessing a Student-Based Technology Training Program for Faculty and Staff" at the recent SUNY Conference on Instructional Technologies for 2003 held at SUNY Potsdam on May 28th-30th, 2003.
SUNY Potsdam Crumb Library has completed three new automation initiatives. The first is the recent opening of Minerva's Cybercafe. Minerva's is located adjacent to the Library lobby and serves up exotic coffee, decadent desserts and internet surfing. Second, Potsdam has also installed a second wireless network in a 2nd floor conference room in Crumb library. 14 new Gateway laptops were purchased with integrated network cards. A new Sharp PG-M20X portable projector enables display of web-based library resources. The laptops and wireless network are used primarily for bibliographic instruction classes and are also used for hosting in-house workshops for staff training. Third, the College Libraries are now live with their new online system from Exlibris Aleph, as part of the SUNY wide initiative.
Syracuse University
The Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Harriet Sonne de Torrens as the new head of the Fine Arts Department, effective March 16.
George Abbott, Head of the Media Services Department was nominated by the American Library Association and elected to a seat on the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Standing Committee – Audiovisual and Multimedia Section beginning in August, 2003.
Christian Dupont, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, has been awarded a Joan Nordell visiting fellowship from Houghton Library, Harvard University, to further his research on American institutional collecting of works by and about the medieval poet Dante Alighieri during the nineteenth century. Christian has also been named to the editorial board of Italian Women Writers, a long-term research endeavor of the Electronic Full-Text Sources (EFTS) program sponsored by the University of Chicago Library and the ARTFL Project.
Peter Graham, University Librarian, has been appointed to the editorial board of American Communist History, a new journal published by Taylor & Francis’ Carfax imprint. Under the auspices of the Historians of American Communism (HOAC), the journal is edited by Dan Leab of Seton Hall University.
Abby Kasowitz-Scheer’s article, Using the Big6 in a University Writing Course: A Collaborative Teaching Experience was recently published in the Big6 eNewsletter. The article describes an instructional web guide that Wendy Bousfield, Reference Librarian, and Abby, Instructional Programs Coordinator, developed in Spring 2002 for the Writing Program.
Bonnie Ryan, Reference Librarian, was selected as the Jesse Ball duPont Minority Scholar at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. She was responsible for teaching Introduction to Historical Archaeology and African American Archaeology She was on academic leave since the fall of 2001.
Bill Garrison, Associate University Librarian for Information Management Services, recently had an article published, “The Colorado Digitization Project: Subject Access Issues.” It appears in Subject Retrieval in a Networked Environment, Proceedings of the IFLA Satellite Meeting, held in Dublin, Ohio.
Robert Cleary, Acquisitions Librarian, went to the 7th Annual Indigenous Legacies of the Caribbean Conference/Tour from January 3-10.
Nancy Turner, Electronic Resources Librarian, was elected to a three-year term to NyLink’s Advisory Group for Electronic Resources.
University at Albany
Kathryn E. Boyd joined the Libraries on February 13, 2003 as the new Head of Acquisition Services. Kathryn comes to us from the Queens Borough Public Library in Jamaica, New York, where she served as Coordinator of Collection Development. Prior to that, she served as Division Manager and Assistant Division Manager for Literature and Languages at the same library. She has an MS in Library and Information Science and an MA in French Language and Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana. Kathryn earned a BA in Library Science from North Texas State University at Denton.
Karen Brown received the Esther J. Piercy Award in June 2003. Presented by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association. The award, citation and $1500 from YBP is given to a nominated librarian with less than 10 years experience for contributions and leadership in the field of library collections and technical services.
Karen Brown also received the Pritchard Award in April 2003. With Karen E. Grimwood and David Mitchell. Given for working in partnership with a library/information science student employee on the exhibit "Inappropriate Children's Books", a project that makes a positive contribution to the profession of librarianship.
Laura Cohen published an article with colleague Matthew Calsada, "Web Accessible Databases for Electronic Resource Collections: A Case Study and its Implications" in The Electronic Library, Vol. 21 No. 1 (February 2003): 31-38. Laura was the invited luncheon keynote speaker for the New Jersey Association of College & Research Libraries at the 2003 conference of the New Jersey Librarians Association on April 1. Her topic was "The Future of Academic Libraries: Harangues and Predictions."
Brenda L. Hazard, "Online Fundraising at ARL Libraries", The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 29, Issue 1, January-February 2003, Pages 8-15.
Trudi Jacobson presented a workshop on Active Learning/Active Teaching at Dartmouth on March 19.
Trudi Jacobson, Lijuan Xu, and Stephan Macaluso of SUNY New Paltz appeared on a panel at the ACRL National Conference in Charlotte, NC. The title was "Will Work for Candy: Motivational Techniques That Work." http://www.albany.edu/~cg219/candy.html
Trudi Jacobson and Holly Heller-Ross, of SUNY Plattsburgh, were invited to lead a panel discussion on the Information Management General Education requirement at the SUNY General Education Conference, "A Foundation for the Future," held in Syracuse on April 24-25.
Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey of SISP gave a presentation at Hunter College in New York on April 28, "Information Literacy: A Collaborative Endeavor."
Vassar College
We are very pleased to announce that Mark Christel recently joined the Vassar College Libraries staff as Head of Reference and Reader Services. He received his BA in English from the University of Wisconsin, an MA in English from Rutgers University and an MILS from the University of Michigan. In 2001, he attended the Frye Leadership Institute sponsored by Emory University and EDUCAUSE. He came to Vassar from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where he was the Humanities Librarian, Coordinator of Reference Services and Director of the TechLab.
Selections from Vassar's Incunabula collection, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, are on exhibit at Vassar College from April 10 to June 9. In connection with a yearlong program called "Transformations of the Text," the Vassar College Libraries is exhibiting selections from its Incunabula collection - books printed before 1501 - that demonstrate the shift from manuscript production to printed works, which some regard as the most important cultural change prior to the appearance of digital technologies. Historians estimate that roughly 30,000 editions of books were printed in Europe during this period, totaling around 20 million copies. These first printed books were thus produced in great numbers, testifying to printing's influence on society and culture. But today incunabula are considered rare.
Vassar's collection of incunabula has grown slowly but steadily since the 19th century. Matthew Vassar, college founder, purchased the first incunabula for the college, a book of hours printed in Paris by Philippe Pigouchet. At present, the college holds 42 books and 98 leaves. Most items in the collection were printed in Latin in either Germany or Italy. They include several of the most popular and most beautiful texts of the 15th century. The exhibit features a variety of individual leaves and full books, including the "Nuremberg Chronicle," which is especially noteworthy for its woodcut illustrations; a French book of hours featuring intricate illustrations, ornate borders, and illuminations; and a page from the Gutenberg Bible (the approximate date of the Gutenberg Bible, the first book ever printed, is 1455). The illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibit, titled "Incunabula in the Vassar College Library," includes essays by Ronald Patkus, Head of Archives and Special Collections, and Benjamin Kohl, Professor of History Emeritus, as well as a short-title catalog of Vassar's incunabula by Julie Kemper, Special Collections Librarian.
The Asian Studies Program at Vassar College received a multi-year grant from the Freeman Foundation in 2002. The Program holds a workshop each year funded by this grant, and invites a bibliographer in the field of Asia studies to participate in each workshop, to review holdings in the library, and to recommend future acquisitions. Last year Ria Koopmans-de Bruijin, East Asian Studies Librarian at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University, was invited and assessed the library's English language collections on Asia in general with focus on China, and this year Ms. Joy Kim, the curator of the Korean Heritage Library, University of Southern California, was invited to evaluate the library holdings on Korea. Next year the Program plans to invite a Japanese librarian. The workshops have been a mutually rewarding experience both for the library and the Program, giving an opportunity to collaborate and work together to build solid collections on Asia. The Program is also a recent recipient of the Library Support Program from the Japan Foundation. The Foundation will provide monographic titles on Japan to further enhance the library's collection on Japan.