ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Endowed chair established at Berkeley

An anonymous donor established an endowed chair to honor Anthropology Professor Emeritus and Andean Scholar John H. Rowe for his foresight in establishing an Anthropology Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The first recipient of the endowed chair is Suzanne H. Calpestri, head of the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library. The endowment recognizes the importance of the librarian in a scholarly community by providing the recipient discretionary money for resources and professional development thereby ensuring that the librarian will be able to provide outstanding support to faculty and students and continue Berkeley’s strong ranking in anthropology.

HighWire Press and ISI Collaborate on hypertext links

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is collaborating with Stanford University Libraries’ HighWire Press to build hypertext links between their electronic resources. Part of the ISI Links initiative, the collaboration provides the technology to permit users to navigate from the ISI Web of Science, a multidisciplinary bibliographic database tool, to participating HighWire publishers’ full text journal content. The HighWire produced journals include more than 100 life science and biomedical titles published by a core group of professional and scholarly societies such as Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

For details about ISI products, visit its Web page http://www.isinet.com. For more information about HighWire, visit its Web site at http://highwire.stanford.edu.

Librarians score on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Librarians are featured in the chapter on careers in the newly revised MBTI Manual. Quotations from librarians representing each of the 16 MBTI types are used to illustrate diversity of type and the differences in how the types approach their jobs. The chapter explains that individuals with various MBTI preferences tend to choose divergent specialties within a profession, enjoy particular aspects of the job, and go about completing tasks in distinct ways. Individuals with different preferences create special niches within a specific occupation where the likelihood of using their type preferences is higher. Data for the chapter was taken from Mary Jane Scherdin’s 1992 national study of 1,600 librarians, which was cosponsored by ACRL and Consulting Psychologists Press. The ACRL 1994 publication Discovering Librarians: Profiles of a Profession presents further information about the study.

Call for papers for off-campus conference

Proposals for presentations are sought for the ninth conference on Off-Campus Library Services sponsored by the Central Michigan University (CMS) Libraries and the CMU College of Extended Learning. The conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, April 26-28, 2000. Proposal abstracts of not more than 500 words are due by March 12, 1999. A copy of the Call for Presentations and details about the conference are on the Web at http://www.lib.cmich.edu/ ocls. Click on “Resources for Off-Campus Librarians.” Or contact Connie Hildebrand at CMU: voice: (517) 774-6080; toll-free fax: (877) 329-6257; e-mail: connie.hildebrand@cmich.edu. ■

Southern Methodist University (SMU) opened its new Fondren Library Center recently as donors and university representatives stood poised to cut the ribbon. The complex encompasses the Fondren Library, the Science and Engineering Library, and the new 7,100 square foot building that will connect the two libraries. Pictured here are from right: SMU trustee and Fondren family representative Sue Trammel Whitfield; SMU Central University Librarian Gillian McCombs; Charles Selecman, grandson of Charles S. Selecman for whom the new Center's Selecman Tower is named; SMU President R. Gerald Turner; SMU Provost Ross Murfin; and library executive board member James Glasscock, who gave the invocation.