ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Stephanie Orphan

President's budget includes $10 million to recruit new librarians

President Bush’s FY 2003 budget contains an increase over last year of $15.8 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), $10 million of which is earmarked for a new initiative to recruit and train a new generation of librarians. Based on census data, more than one-quarter of all librarians with master’s degrees will reach retirement age before 2009- This does not take into account early retirement, death, or other reasons for leaving the profession before the age of 65.

The IMLS initiative, 21st Century Librar- ians, will support scholarships and fellowships in support of master’s programs; doctoral stu- dents, who will be the professors teaching the next generation of librarians; distance learning technology to support training pro- grams for librarians in underserved rural ar- eas; and recruitment of a diverse and skilled workforce, including librarians with diverse language skills and up-to-date technical knowledge.

ebrary launches international library program

Digital library provider ebrary has rolled out its ebrarian product to 36 pilot libraries, in- cluding Stanford University Libraries and Aca- demic Information Resources, Yale Univer- sity Library, and the 34 members of California’s Peninsula Library System, and expects to make the product available to libraries worldwide during the first quarter of 2002. ebrarian offers patrons unlimited multiuser access to copyright protected books, journals, and other documents from more than 100 publishers, includ- ing Elsevier Science Publishing, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Random House, Harvard University Press, Cam- bridge University Press, and Penguin Classics. The collection includes 5,000 titles in subject areas such as language and literature, social science, medicine, history, science and technology, and philosophy. ebrarian is delivered through custom, cobranded Web sites, which are created, hosted, and maintained by ebraiy. The system is designed to integrate with libraries’ existing workflow, digital resources, and catalog and administrative processes, specifically through full MARC records for all titles in the ebrary repository, ebrarian is based on the portable document format (PDF), which is used by the majority of printing houses worldwide and ensures that documents maintain the look and feel of the originals, and includes research tools that allow users to interact with content at the word level.

CIC brings 19th-century American fiction online

Through a cooperative digitization project of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), more than 1,700 works of 19th-century American fiction are now online, with full text and images, and searchable. Compiled by Lyle Wright in his landmark 1957 bibliography, American Fiction 1851-1875, the digitized works include novels, novelettes, romances, short stories, tall tales, and allegories. The bibliography is part of Wright’s three- volume work listing American fiction from 1774 through 1900, considered to be the best bibliography of American adult fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The project, which will ultimately include nearly 3,000 works, involves a complex series of steps, including digitizing the microfilm, converting more than 400,000 page images to text, correcting any errors resulting from the optical character recognition software, and creating the search feature.

Works currently available online are from authors such as Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving.

Indiana University’s Digital Library Program is the project host for Wright American Fiction, which is freely available on the Web at http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/ wright2/.

New Web site profiles Sanford Berman Papers at UIUC

The personal papers of prominent library cata- loger and activist Sanford Berman are now profiled in a Web site at the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Maintained by the University Archives, the Web site highlights the career of Berman, former cataloger at the Southdale Hennepin County Library in Minnesota and best known for successfully challenging the outdated terminology of widely accepted library catalog subject headings.

The Berman Papers are part of the ALA Archives held by the UIUC library and proC&RL News ■ March 2002 / 165 vide an unvarnished look at controversial is- sues, such as censorship and the socioeco- nomics of information. The Web site, devel- oped by Madeline Douglass, a librarian who worked with Berman at the Southdale Hennepin County Libraiy, offers a glimpse into the rich primary source materials held in the ALA Archives. The site is available at http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/ead/ala/ 9701040a/berman/intro. html.

Northeastern University creates Cyber Cafe in library

Designed as a technology gateway, North- eastern University’s Cyber Cafe in Boston was carved out of an area of the Snell Library that was once a reserve reading room. The cafe contains an “e-bar,” which hosts 6 flat - screen computers, an adjacent computer lab with 25 additional com- puter stations, and an- other 70 stations down the hall.

Responding to re- quests by students, North- eastern and the cafe’s de- signers, Prellwitz/Chilinski Associates of Cambridge, provided laptop accomo- dations, network connec- tions, and Internet access on all public computers at the e-bar. The Cyber Cafe also includes booth seating and oversized group work spaces, which have become some of the most popular places in the library to study.

The cafe combines warm, vibrant colors with wood textures and metals to create a space that more resembles an urban coffee shop than an academic library space. Besides access to technology, one of the main attractions of the Cyber Cafe has been the introduction of food into the library. Beverages, salads, sushi, bakery goods, fruit, and yogurt are available 12 hours a day, with self-serve vending machines available 24 hours a day.

The Cyber Cafe has become a popular 24/ 7 destination on campus for small groups, individual studying, and socializing, with 200 to 300 people coming through the doors overnight. The Cyber Cafe has brought a renewed focus to the Snell Library as the heart of learning on Northeastern’s cam- pus.

NISO establishes Networked Reference Services Committee

The National Information Standards Organi- zation (NISO) is organizing a new commit- tee to develop standards that will enable interoperable, networked reference services.

The committee will be formed into two teams. One will develop a question process- ing transaction protocol for interchange of messages between digital reference domains, which will support processing and routing of questions and responses and packaging of other information to be exchanged. The other will build a metadata element set to identify and describe key com- ponents of both ques- tion and answer data and institutional and personal data.

Students using the e-bar at Northeastern University's Cyber Cafe. The e-bar is the physical hub of the space, hosting six flat- screen computers surrounded by comfortable lounge seating and study spaces.

The Networked Reference Services Committee will be chaired by Sally H. McCallum of the Li- brary of Congress. NISO standards are de- veloped by consensus under the guidance of experts and practitio- ners in the field to meet the needs of both the information user and the producer.

Baker & Taylor and Alibris help libraries acquire hard-to-find books

Users of Baker & Taylor’s The Title Source

II product now have access to Alibris’ inventory of out-of-print and rare books. The Title Source II will display Alibris’ current inventory of nearly 400,000 out-of print, publisher out of business, unable to locate publisher, publication cancelled, or apply direct titles. Librarians considering rare or out-of-print books are able to link directly from The Title Source II’s bibliographic records to Alibris’ listings on its fulfillment Web site.

College of William and Mary library undergoes renovation

A major expansion and renovation project underway at the College of William and Mary’s Swem library includes a 98,000-gross-square- foot addition to the library and a complete renovation of the existing 168,000 gross square footage. Funded by a $24.1 million appropriation from the Virginia General Assembly, the project is designed to redefine the needs of a library of the 21st century. An additional $6 million of private money is funding a 20,000-gross-square-foot pavilion that will house the library’s manuscripts, rare books, University Archives, and Warren E. Burger Collection.

The library’s infrastructure is being updated to accommodate developing technologies ancl provide space for new print and electronic acquisitions, increased microform and multimedia collections, special collections, and general user areas. All of the environmental systems within the library are undergoing significant upgrades to preserve valuable materials and to add to the general comfort levels of users and staff. One of the highlights of the new facility is the Information Commons on the first floor, with clusters of integrated computer stations and collaborative study rooms.

The new addition, consisting of two attached pavilions on the east side of the library, is complete. The entire building and renovation project, which began in 1999, is expected to be completed by summer of 2004. ■

RBMS to offer 43rd preconference in Atlanta

Special collections librarians are undertaking new responsibilities and duties, and learning new ways of doing things. This includes coping with ever-changing technology and interacting with new types of users and new methodologies of research. Access is being digitized and collections are being commodifed. Prospective professionals have fewer educational and employment opportunities and are becoming more difficult to recruit.

Special collections must now compete harder for the financial and institutional commitment that they have so long enjoyed.

ACRL invites you to explore the changing role of special collections librarians during the 43rd Rare Books and Manuscripts Section preconference, to be held June 11-14, 2002, in Atlanta, Georgia. Entitled “New Occasions, New Duties: Changing Roles and Expectations in Special Collections,” the preconference will examine the different aspects and implications of change, and show ways in which special collections librarians can take advantage of change for their own use and development.

Preconference sessions will be a combination of plenary sessions, short papers, and seminars. Speakers include Carla J. Stoffle, dean of libraries and Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona; Robert L. Byrd, director of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library; Michael Lomax, president of Dillard University; and James Vinson Carmichael Jr., Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The preconference will be held at the historic Georgian Terrace Hotel and Emory University. Housing is available at both the Georgian Terrace and in the Emory University dorms. Attendees will also have the opportunity to visit the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.

Registration materials are available. Additional information about the preconference is available on the RBMS Web site at http://www.rbms.nd.edu/.

For more information, contact program chair Nora Quinlan (e-mail: nora@ nova.edu) or the local arrangements cochairs Steve Enniss (e-mail: librse@ emory.edu) and Laura Micham (e-mail: lmicham@zemory.edu). ■