ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Chinese government releases Yongyi Song

Yongyi Song, head of technical services at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was released by the People’s Republic of China in late January. He had been incarcerated for six months under suspicion of illicit activities, including stealing and buying state secrets. He had traveled to China in June 1999 with his wife to do research for a book on the Chinese Cultural Revolution (C&RL News, October 1999).

Many worked for Yongyi’s release, and Dickinson President William G. Durden expressed his gratitude to Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) for his efforts in securing the release, as well as to Professor Jerome Cohan for his pro bono support of the college’s legal efforts.

The library community's first foray into Job Shadow Day was a success. Here participants listen to a presentation at Wayne State University.

More than 125 students learned about the world of libraries during the ALA Divisions' Job Shadow Day, February 2,2000. Here students tour the Queens Borough Public Library. A full compliment of the activities that took place during Job Shadow Day will be shared in the April issue of C&RL News and on the Job Shadow Day Web site atwww.ala.org/acrl/jobshadowday.html.

The library community rallied behind Yongyi, sending letters and petitions to the Chinese government. Upon his return, Yongyi sent a letter to ALA Executive Director William Gordon expressing his gratitude for the letter that ALA sent, “[ALA’s petition letter] is a declaration of academic freedom by American librarians in the 21st century. It is a successful embodiment in the library profession of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Without your petition letter, without the rescue efforts by Dickinson College, the State Department, lawmakers in Congress and friends from all over the world, my academic career would have ended in a dark jail cell.”

Yongyi added that he would continue his research on the Cultural Revolution and “dedicate the rest of my life to the establishment of the ‘Cultural Revolution Memorial Museum’ and the building of a ‘Cultural Revolution Database.’”

Chatham College outsources library services

Chatham College has awarded an 18-month contract to Library Systems & Services (LSSI) to manage its library. LSSI is working with the women’s college to implement a new organizational structure that will bring librarians and information technology professionals together in a newly created Information Services Department. Bob Smith, former director of the Medina (Ohio) County Library, is LSSI’s interim director at Chatham.

“Our strategy is to create a library environment that is more responsive to the needs of the faculty and students by providing resources that best reflect their needs,” said Esther L. Barazzone, president of Chatham. “We are committed to making the Jennie King Mellon Library both the academic and technology epicenter of Chatham College.”

HighWire Press develops archiving plan

Stanford University Libraries’ (SUL) HighWire Press has devised a comprehensive plan for preserving and assuring access to the more than 170 scholarly journals it hosts on the Web.

“Preserving and protecting information is one of the core functions of libraries,” said Michael A. Keller, Stanford university librarian and publisher of HighWire Press. “We are just as concerned with the preservation of online journals as we are with preserving rare books and manuscripts. The techniques are different, but the goal is the same: to make sure the information remains available and accessible, now and in the future. Once a publisher instructs HighWire to enable access to a given article or piece, the community should be confident it will be at least as freely available in a decade or a generation as it is today.” For this reason, migration of formats, standards, and media is a fundamental issue addressed in the HighWire program.

SUL is also developing LOCKSS-Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe—a distributed archiving model. Being developed in cooperation with Sun Microsystems and with National Science Foundation funding, LOCKSS is a freeware-based, voluntary approach to archiving online material that relies on consensus among several linked servers to determine authoritative states of files and restore lost or damage files automatically. Details about LOCKSS are available at http:// hwm.stanford.edu/pdf/archive.pdf.

Best Practices in Information Literacy Programs

The ACRL Board at its Midwinter Meetings funded the first steps in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy’s (IIL) Best Practices initiative. One of IIL’s three initiatives, Best Practices is an effort to advance the implementation of information literacy programs by developing a statement of the characteristics of effective information literacy programs and identifying model programs. Information about IIL initiatives may be found at http://www.ala.org/acrl/ nili/nilihp.html.

Once characteristics and model programs are identified, this information will be featured in a national conference.

A seven member Best Practices Project Team will include five librarians and two nonlibrarian professionals involved in information literacy programs in higher education. The team will use a Delphi review process to solicit broad professional input; the selection of exemplary institutions will be through an application and review process.

The results of their work will be shared through programs and publications. A fuller description of the program is available at http:// www.earlham.edu/~libr/Plan.htm.

Questions may be directed to Thomas G. Kirk Jr., college librarian, Earlham College, Richmond, IN 47374, (765) 983-1360 or kirkto@earlham.edu.

NetPaper.com partners with Cornell

Cornell University Business Services has signed an agreement with NetPaper.com to implement its CAMPUS product, an Internet-based solution for the creation and on-demand printing of coursepacks and customized teaching materials. Rich McDaniel, Cornell Business Services director, said that CAMPUS, “adeptly addresses both sides of the information transaction—publishers’ worries about control of content and payment for use, as well as the college campus’ desire to meet the information needs of professors and students in the most efficient, cost effective manner possible. Through the NetPaper.com CAMPUS services, Cornell’s course packs are sent to a regional on-demand printing facility. Cornell hopes that use of CAMPUS will reduce their capital investment and maintenance costs and increase their capacity. ■