Barbara Moran has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists Award. Moran, professor at SILS, has been selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists project at the Institute for Library and Information Studies at Charles University in Prague.
Gary Marchionini has been appointed to a National Library of Medicine committee. Marchionini, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor at SILS, will serve a four year term on the Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine. The National Library of Medicine is the world's largest medical library providing research services and information for health care and biomedicine.
U.S. News and World Report Ranks Library Schools...FinallyU.S. News and World Report at long last updated its rankings of library graduate programs for 2006, the first update since 1998. While it may partially quell the displeasure voiced by some librarians and library educators—who last year debated on the American Library Association (ALA) Council to ask the magazine for an update (see LJ Academic Newswire 5/17/05)—this year's list will likely stir up some new issues. Of the 56 schools with programs accredited by the ALA, 49 of which are in the United States, the report ranked the top 32 schools to score a composite of 2.5 or better out of a possible 5 points. The surprises? Not one of the four New York City area library schools—Pratt, Long Island University, Queens College, or St. Johns University—made the top 32. In addition, other well-regarded schools, such as Texas Woman's College, failed to rate in the top 32.
Like the last survey, published in 1999 and based on a 1998 results, the 2006 rankings are based on a survey sent in the previous year to deans, program directors, and faculty of ALA accredited graduate program. Although the rankings are dismissed as flawed by many educators, they also make for good copy for schools that do well. ALA councilors last year even debated a resolution to ask the magazine to update the rankings, with some arguing that the rankings are widely read and ought to at least be current. The good news? The University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill remained in their top spots for the 2006 rankings. The magazine web site provides free access to only the top three listings. Syracuse University, which tied for third in the earlier ranking with the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of Pittsburgh, came in third outright, followed by the University of Washington, Michigan, Rutgers, and then three tied for seventh: Indiana University-Bloomington, Pitt, and the University of Texas-Austin.
UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library Receives SF Examiner Archives
The archives of the San Francisco Examiner are being donated to the University of California, Berkeley's prestigious Bancroft Library. University officials say the donation is the single largest gift ever to the library. The collection will be known as the Fang Family San Francisco Examiner Archives, in part to pay tribute to the family that published the Examiner from 2000 to 2004, and is a gift of the Examiner's current owners, the Anschutz Corporation and the SF Newspaper Company. The gift will include the photographic morgue, more than five million items, from what was considered at one point "the flagship of the Hearst publishing empire."
The collection will more than double the size of the Bancroft's photographic print collection and triple the collection of negatives, to a total of over 8 million prints and negatives. In addition, the Bancroft will be given the 850 bound volumes of the newspaper's archival copy, which spans from 1888 to 1956, as well as the clipping files, a whopping 3000-plus linear feet of materials. Bancroft archivists will begin processing the Examiner archives in May. Full processing and cataloging of the collection will take years and is contingent on funding. "Great libraries must have more than finished works," said Berkeley's director of libraries Tom Leonard, who is also a professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "We also need the first drafts and fragments of experience. In both words and pictures, this is what newspapers represent."
"What's in a Name Tag?" At McGill U., Could It Be Worker Satisfaction?
Is discontent brewing among non-professional staff at McGill University in Montreal? According to a recent article in the student newspaper, the McGill Daily, the level of job dissatisfaction and the number of union grievances have risen sharply in the year since Janine Schmidt took over as Director of Libraries. Schmidt, however, dismissed talk of widespread job dissatisfaction among library support staff. Library assistant Franco Taddeo says longer hours, including nights and weekends, fewer student workers to pitch in, and Schmidt's "corporate" philosophy are rankling some staff. "To be fair, [Schmidt] has been consistent and unwavering," Taddeo told LJ Academic Newswire. In practice, however, Taddeo says Schmidt's plans are doing more to disrupt the lives of library workers than to improve service to students. Library assistants, he says, now pull more varied shifts, including late nights and weekends. "We are providing the illusion of more service," he says, "but in reality we are simply stretching the same service over longer hours." Union representative Linda Lombard confirmed that grievances filed by library workers have spiked. From January 2001 until Schmidt's appointment in February 2005, Lombard told the LJ Academic Newswire, a total of nine grievances were filed on behalf of library workers. In the past 14 months alone, she said she has filed 15.
Schmidt, who succeeded Frances Groen as Trenholme Director of Libraries in February 2005, came to McGill from Australia's University of Queensland where in 1999 her efforts earned her a Library Manager of the Year award. She seemed genuinely bemused by the report in the McGill Daily and told the LJ Academic Newswire that worker satisfaction at the library is not a problem. She acknowledged that she has made changes designed to offer better service to the McGill community, including adding a 24-hour area, she said the articles did not indicate widespread unease, but rather focused on just one of 13 branch libraries, quoting one "sessional" library assistant (Taddeo). "The library emphasizes teamwork," Schmidt said. "Most staff have embraced the changes enthusiastically." Taddeo, however, insisted to the LJ Academic Newswire that staff unhappiness is simmering and offered an illustration: name tags. He said Schmidt requested that library employees wear name tags but said only a fraction are actually doing so. Taddeo said this was a "non-confrontational" way for people to protest in a "subtle yet obvious manner." Schmidt also brought up the name tags, however, saying that on a visit yesterday to one of McGill's libraries, every employee she saw was wearing a name tag—and that a potential donor noticed and, unsolicited, praised the initiative. One thing Taddeo and Schmidt agree on is that student satisfaction with the library is high.
GoodFellows: The NCSU Libraries Announces its Four Library Fellows for 2006-08
The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries has announced this year's crop of NCSU Library Fellows. The NCSU Libraries Fellows Program, now in its eighth year, seeks to develop future leaders for academic libraries, with a focus on science, engineering and digital librarianship, and library management. The class of 2006-2008 includes four fellows who will start later this year. Lisa Boxill will receive her MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), where she was the recipient of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries scholarship for library students. She also holds a law degree from Harvard Law School. At NCSU, Boxill will be assigned to the Special Collections Research Center. Janelle Joseph received a Master of Arts in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona. She was selected for Arizona's Knowledge River program, which addresses the library and information needs and perspectives of Hispanics and Native Americans. At NCSU, Joseph will work in Collection Management.
James Ruth will be awarded MLS in May 2006 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2004, he was named a Carolina Academic Library Associate. Ruth will join NCSU's development staff in fundraising activities for the Libraries' Capital Campaign. Markus Wust will be one of the first graduates of a new Inter-faculty Combined Degree program for the Master of Library and Information Studies and the Master of Arts in Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta. Wust serves as Graduate Assistant in the School of Library and Information Studies at Alberta, designing a new school web site and providing technology instruction. Wust will work in NCSU's Special Collections, supporting the libraries' digitization program.
On Demand? Smithsonian Inks Deal with Showtime, Amid Criticism
This is not your father's Smithsonian. Just a year after selling its press to HarperCollins, the Smithsonian Institute has entered into a deal with the Showtime Network to create Smithsonian Networks. "Smithsonian On Demand" will feature original documentaries, events, and short subject exploration of the major scientific, cultural, and historical events of the day. Smithsonian officials said programming will be drawn from the assets of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex, and its scientific and scholarly research centers, as well the editorial content of the Smithsonian and Air & Space magazines. The new service is slated to be launched in December 2006. Showtime Networks Inc. (SNI) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CBS.
A number of filmmakers, however, were less than enthusiastic about the deal, saying they have relied on the holdings of the Smithsonian, and question whether they will retain deep access to Smithsonian materials for works not slated for the new Smithsonian Network. According to the Washington Post, filmmakers doing "more than an incidental treatment" of a subject mainly from Smithsonian materials or wishing to focus on a Smithsonian curator or scientist would "first have to offer the idea to Smithsonian/Showtime. Otherwise, the archives could not be used outside the realm of news programs." This, as well as the refusal of the Smithsonian to outline the terms of the deal has caused grave concerns. "This is obscene," Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, a filmmaker, told the Washington Post. "I am not against them having a deal with Showtime that is lucrative. But the archives are for the public to use."
Correction: Baylor remains in Waco, TX!
Last week we moved Baylor University to Houston. It remains, as always, in Waco, TX. We apologize for the error.
Best Sellers in Computer Science, June 2005-present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
Wired For Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship
Nass, Clifford Ivar
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 0262140926. $32.50
Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle To Build the Modern Computer
Ed. by B. Jack Copeland
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0198565933. $129.95
Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
Chun, Wendy Hui-Kyong
MIT Press
2006. ISBN 0262033321. $37.50
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer
Leavitt, David
W.W. Norton
2006. ISBN 0393052362. $22.95
Memory-Based Language Processing
Daelemans, Walter
Cambridge University Press
2005. ISBN 0521808901. $75.00
Constraint-Based Local Search
Van Hentenryck, Pascal
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 0262220776. $40.00
Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation
Ed. by Ron Sun
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521839645. $90.00
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
Witten, Ian
Morgan Kaufmann
2005. ISBN 0120884070. $59.95
Artificial Life Models in Software
Ed. by Andrew Adamatzky
Springer
2005. ISBN 1852339454. $69.95
Grammar of Graphics
Wilkinson, Leland
Springer
2005. ISBN 0387245448. $79.95
TREC: Experiment and Evaluation in Information Retrieval
Ed. by Ellen M. Voorhees
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 0262220733. $45.00
Emerging Wireless Multimedia Services and Technologies
Ed. by Apostolis K. Salkintzis
John Wiley
2005. ISBN 0470021497. $117.00
Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology
Ed. by Katie Salen
MIT Press
2006. ISBN 0262195364. $45.00
Access Control Systems: Security, Identity Management and Trust Models
Benantar, Messaoud
Springer
2006. ISBN 0387004459. $69.95
Internet in the Middle East: Global Expectations and Local Imaginations in Kuwait
Wheeler, Deborah L.
State University of New York Press
2006. ISBN 0791465853. $73.50
Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age
Hally, Mike
National Academies Press
2005. ISBN 0309096308. $27.95
Fiber to the Home: The New Empowerment
Green, Paul Eliot
John Wiley
2006. ISBN 0471742473. $49.95
Scalable Continuous Media Streaming Systems: Architecture, Design, Analysis and Implementation
Lee, Jack Y. B.
John Wiley
2005. ISBN 0470857544. $120.00
User: InfoTechnoDemo
Lunenfeld, Peter
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 0262621983. $25.95
Internet as a Large-Scale Complex System
Ed. by Kihong Park
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0195157206. $89.50
QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions or need further assistance, please contact our
Online Support Team
Reed Business Information
2000 Clearwater Drive, Oak Brook, IL 60523
eletters@reedbusiness.com
