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NEWS FROM THE FIELD
C&RL News, February 2002
Vol. 63 No. 2
by Stephanie Orphan
Mary Jane Petrowski named ACRL senior associate executive director
ACRL is pleased to announce that, effective January 17, Mary Jane Petrowski is ACRL senior associate executive director. Her primary responsibilities are in the areas of membership promotion, retention, and recruitment; ACRL sections and chapters; and serving as the number two staff person ACRL. Petrowski comes to ACRL with experience in special, research, and liberal arts college libraries. She has been actively involved in ACRL since 1990.
 Petrowski, who has served as head of information literacy at Colgate University since December 1993, previously held the positions of assistant undergraduate librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1989–93); reference librarian at the U. S. Air Force Europe Command Library at Ramstein Air Base, Germany (1986–88); and library director, U. S. Army Field Station, Sinop, Turkey (1978–85). From 1998 to 1999, she served as lead faculty for the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program; she has been a continuing faculty member since 1999.
Petrowski has also chaired the ACRL Instruction Section (1998–99) and the ACRL Nominations 2001 Committee (1999–00). She has served on the ACRL Information Literacy Standards Committee (2000–01) and the Institute for Information Literacy Advisory Board (2000–01).
Petrowski received her MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a certificate of advanced study in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a B.A. in English from Duke University.
Northern Light discontinues free public access to Web search
In an effort to reduce costs and focus on the needs of its enterprise (subscription) customers, Northern Light Technology is no longer providing free Web search capabilities to the general public. The company continues to make its fee-based special collection of approximately 70 million pages of full-text content from more than 7,100 sources available to both enterprise customers and the public. Enterprise customers will also retain the ability to search the Web using Northern Light, and the company will continue to update its index of Web pages for those customers.
Northern Light attributes the shift in business strategy to booming demand from its enterprise and marketing partners for its search, classification, taxonomy, and content solutions, while the business model for free, advertising-supported public Web search was slow to develop for the company.
University of Georgia library partners with Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies
The Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia (UGA) and the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies have joined together to chronicle Georgia’s rich history in the Civil Rights Movement.
The new venture, focusing on “unsung foot soldiers,” will establish UGA as one of the premier institutions in the nation for the study of civil rights. The foundation for the project is the award-winning documentary by social work professor Maureen Daniels, “Foot soldier for equal justice: Horace T. Ward and the desegregation of the University of Georgia,” which yielded photos, interview transcripts, and other materials that will be donated to the collection.
Sirsi and DRA complete merger
Sirsi Corporation and Data Research Associates (DRA) have successfully integrated their operations. The company, which will now be known as Sirsi, has integrated its product development, customer service, and sales and marketing operations to capitalize on the combined resources resulting from the merger. The management team includes executives from both organizations.
Following the August 2001 acquisition, Sirsi conducted a three-month evaluation of all Sirsi and DRA products to arrive at a technology strategy that focuses on standardizing integrated library system development on the Unicorn Library Management System. No additional development will be done on Taos as a separate product after the release of Version 1.2, scheduled for this month, however, the company will incorporate some of Taos’ concepts into future products. Unicorn will provide current users of DRA Classic, Inlex, MultiLIS, Web 2, and Taos in its current form with the functionality they anticipated from a fully developed Taos solution.
ACRL offers Directory of Test Collections and new CLIP Notes
Directory of Test Collections in Academic, Professional, and Research Libraries, edited by Paul G. Fehrmann and Nancy Patricia O’Brien, is a tool to aid researchers and practitioners in identifying, locating, and examining tests that might be useful for their work.
The directory includes the results of a systematic survey of collections and provides a list of institutions, with contact information, that will allow access to their test collections. Information includes the size, availability, contents, and focus of the collections.
 Directory of Test Collections in Academic, Professional, and Research Libraries (ISBN 0-8389-8167-4) sells for $28; $25 for ACRL members.
ACRL has also introduced a new publication in its popular College Library Information Packets (CLIPS), designed to provide practical ideas for managing libraries’ programs and services.
Travel, Sabbatical, and Study Leave Policies in College Libraries, CLIP Note #30 (ISBN 0-8389-8164-X), compiled by Carolyn Gaskell and Allen S. Morrill, is designed to help keep librarians up-to-date with library policies and practices and to keep them current with new trends and technological changes.
The volume includes examples of written polices at college libraries, covering travel and reimbursement policies, grants of sabbaticals, and leaves of absence or study leave policies. The cost is $23; $21 for ACRL members.
Publications may be ordered from ALA, P.O. Box 932501, Atlanta, GA; 31193-2501. Phone: (866) 746-7252 (866-Shop ALA); fax: (770) 442-9742. An order form is also available online at http://www.ala.org/acrl/pubsform.html.
Texas A&M University Libraries and ARL receive NSF grant
A collaborative proposal from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Texas A&M University Libraries for assessing service quality in digital libraries has been approved for funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project, “Developing a National Science Digital Library (NSDL) LibQUAL+ Protocol” is an outgrowth of the LIBQUAL+ project, which was undertaken by ARL and Texas A&M to measure library service quality across institutions.
Under the grant, ARL and Texas A&M will receive funding for a three-year period to adapt the LibQual+ instrument for use in the Science, Math, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library community. The goals of the project are to define the dimensions of digital library service quality from the users’ perspectives, develop a tool for measuring user perceptions and expectations of digital library service quality across NSDL digital library contexts, and identify digital library best practices that permit generalizations across operations and development platforms.
More information about LibQUAL+ can be found on the Web at http://www.arl.org/libqual.
Thaw Conservation Center opens at Morgan Library
The Thaw Conservation Center, a world-class laboratory for the conservation of works on paper and a place for conservation studies, is scheduled to open this month at New York’s Morgan Library. The Thaw Center occupies the entire 5,6000-square-foot fourth floor of the historic Morgan House and more than doubles the size of the previous conservation facilities. The facility, designed by New York-based Samuel Anderson Architect, includes designated areas for wet and dry conservation work, matting and framing, advanced seminars, graduate internships and postgraduate fellowships.
The center was funded through a $10 million gift to the Morgan Library from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust to support conservation activities at the institution. Margaret Holben Ellis, professor of conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, has been appointed director of the Shaw Conservation Center.
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2002 ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute
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Academic libraries exist in a constantly changing environment with many new challenges and many available opportunities. New demands on academic libraries call for fundamental shifts in leadership know-how. In response to these challenges, ACRL and the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education are collaborating to offer the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4-9, 2002.
Learn among the leaders and trendsetters in academic library administration. The institute is designed for directors of libraries and individuals in positions such as associate university librarian, assistant dean, vice president of information resources, university librarian, and college librarian, or individuals involved in decision-making that affects the entire library operation or other important relationships on campus.
Increase your capacity to lead and manage. Find out if your organization is well-positioned to meet current and future challenges while Harvard Institutes for Higher Education faculty address issues such as:
• leadership;
• organizational strategy;
• transformational learning; and
• planning.
Don’t miss this exciting educational opportunity! The 2002 ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4-9, 2002. Registration materials and details are online at www.gse.harvard.edu/~ppe/. (Under programs, “Higher Education,” then scroll down to ACRL Leadership Institute.) Questions? Contact acrl@ala.org.
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UC libraries expand interlibrary loan service
Through a partnership between the California Digital Library and Fretwell-Downing, Inc., a standards-based digital library company, the University of California libraries are expanding their interlibrary-loan service. The system expansion, which is expected to be concluded by mid-2002, will allow researchers and students to easily request materials from any other campus, check the status of the request for print materials and, receive items via online desktop delivery. The new software also includes complete integration of all ILL work flow processing.
Using new open URL technology, the extended services can include materials found in commercially produced article databases licensed by the California Digital Library, enabling UC scholars, students, and staff to initiate requests directly from commercial database search result screens.
Ovid adds Kluwer’s journals
Ovid Technologies has made more than 700 Kluwer journals available through its search software. The Kluwer Collection provides direct bibliographic and PDF access to titles in a broad range of subject areas, including engineering, medicine, psychology and social science, agriculture, chemistry and pharmaceuticals, religion and philosophy, and linguistics, among others. The journals are linked from both Ovid and SilverPlatter databases and can be purchased on an individual title basis or in subject-specific packages.
Tarlton Law Library introduces millionth book
A rare English dictionary was recently introduced at the University of Texas at Austin as the millionth volume at the Tarlton Law Library of the Jamail Center of Legal Research. John Rastell’s The Exposicions of (the) Termys of (the) Law of England is a unique volume of one of the first English dictionaries ever published. The acquisition of this volume was made possible through a donation from Joseph D. Jamail.
The library also formally introduced the million-and-first volume into its collection Vocabularius Utriusque Juris, a Roman law dictionary, the oldest book in Tarlton’s rare book collection.
 2000 ACRL statistics at your fingertips
ACRL’s 2000 Academic Library Trends and Statistics is now online. This database of information from 1,678 academic libraries in all Carnegie classifications allows users to search and display data according to their needs. The core set of data consists of four major categories: collections (monographic volumes, serials and microforms, etc.), expenditures (library materials, electronic serials, computer hardware and software, salaries and wages, etc.), library operations (hours of operation, staff, ILL, reference, etc.), and local characteristics or attributes (enrollment, institutional budget, etc.). Also included is data on institutions’ activities in providing library services for distance learning. To purchase, go to http://acrl.telusys.net/trendstat/2000/.
Swets Blackwell sponsors
WESS Martinus Nijhoff Study Grant
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Swets Blackwell, which acquired Martinus Nijhoff International in August 2001, has announced that it will sponsor the Martinus Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant for the year 2002.
The “Nijhoff,” as it has come to be called, was founded in 1985 and provides for up to 4,500 Euros in support of research pertaining to Western European studies, librarianship, or the book trade.
The welcome announcement from Swets Blackwell means that ACRL will be able to accept applications for the 2002 award through May 1. The selection of the successful application will be made by a jury that will meet at the ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta this summer. Travel supported by this grant should take place during the fall of 2002.
For more information on the Nijhoff application process, please visit http://www.ala.org/acrl/nijhoff.html. For an impressive list of published research that has been made possible by the Nijhoff grant since 1985, visit http://www.library.upenn.edu/~lehmann/nijhoff.html. |
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