Langsdale Library, University of Baltimore

Staff News and Notes
May 2006

 

What we did in April

Tammy Taylor was elected to the position of Vice President/President Elect of the Associates, Paraprofessionals & Library Support Staff (APLSS) division of the Maryland Library Association.

Carol Vaeth has been named the Paraprofessional of the Year by the Maryland Library Association (MLA).  Carol was honored for her long commitment to improving interlibrary loan services in the state as a whole and within the University of Maryland System.

Lucy Holman has received the annual Maryland Library Association Award for providing sustained service to the Maryland Library Association and for her activities in support of library interests in the State.

Lucy Holman was also accepted for participation in the Frye Leadership Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. “The purpose of the Frye Leadership Institute is to develop creative leaders to guide and transform academic information services for higher education in the twenty-first century."

Thomas Hollowak served as the programming co-chair for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference that held in Baltimore April 20-22.

John Mealy served on the MARAC program committee and organized a session for Friday 21 April 2006 entitled "Workshops: Sponsoring, Organizing, Teaching and Attending."

Jeffrey Hutson attended the Off Campus Library Services Conference in Savannah, Georgia, April 26-28.  Conference attendees from across the U.S. and Canada discussed theories and technologies for providing library resources to students pursuing their education online and at distance education sites.

Ivy Owens and Ted Kruse attended the State Publications Depository and Distribution Libraries Meeting held on April 6 at the Pratt Library. The key note speaker was Ellis Kitchen, the Maryland State Chief of Information Technology. His address gave an overview of the way Maryland State Agencies, who produce the State Documents we receive, are influenced, funded, and how they measure success. During the question and answer period, someone pointed out that many e-documents coming out of the State Agencies frequently change their web address, thus making state libraries' attempt to catalog them (and anyone's attempt to provide a stable link) useless. A task force was established to bring these concerns to the State agencies.

Thomas Arendall-Salvetti, Valerie Carey, Adrian Korz and Michael Shochet attended a teleconference on Google Book Search. It discussed Google's project to scan in the text of all the books in several major libraries. In additional to discussion the legal and technical issues surrounding this project, the session used the project as a starting point for a discussion of the role of libraries in an increasingly digital future.

Ivy Owens attended a training session on MARC Basics on April 12 at the OCLC CapCON Center in Washington DC.

Susan Wheeler attended a session on Portico, a "dark archive"service designed to provide continued access to electronic journals that a library has paid for should a publisher stop providing such access.

 

And coming up in May...

The Maryland Library Association's annual conference will be held on May 4-5 in Ocean City Maryland. Carol Vaeth and Lucy Holman will be on hand to receive their awards noted above. Tammy Taylor and Steve Labash will also attend.

 

Lucy Holman, Susan Wheeler and Michael Shochet will attend a session on an enhancement of the library's catalog called "Primo: an Exclusive Peek from Ex Libris".

 

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