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Visitors to Cornell

The library was host to several visitors in March. On March 14, four administrators, led by Dr. Yoshimori Honkura, vice president for planning, and Ms. Rino Ono, a librarian in the Library Systems Planning & Management Section, part of a seven-person team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology visiting Cornell, spent two hours in the library to learn about library facilities and public access computer support, library orientation for new students, Project Euclid, and activities aimed at curbing the rise of journal subscription prices. They also took a tour of the Wason Collection.

On March 28, Mary-Alice Lynch, the executive director of Nylink, met with seventeen members of the library staff over the course of the day to learn about the library's services and, in particular, our new initiatives.

The same day, March 28, Per Olsson, the director, and Mikael Petren, the team leader in Library Systems, from the Karolinska Institutet Library in Stockholm, met with seven staff from CUL to learn about DCAPS, library collaborations with faculty, institutional repositories, and Project Euclid.

We are looking forward to hosting a visit on May 12 by thirteen librarians and IT directors from Australia and new Zealand led by Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow and University Librarian (1980-2002) at the Australian National University. They are interested in hearing about our digital library initiatives, in particular e-publishing (DPubS, Project Euclid, and arXiv) and digital preservation.

The library hosts many visitors each year who come to Cornell to benefit from learning about CUL's innovative approaches to supporting both teaching and learning through its use of advanced technologies and development of new services. The number of foreign visitors attests to the library's contribution to the growth of Cornell as a transnational university.

CUL Technical Services Staff Create Catalog for Hillel Collection

About a year ago, Cornell Hillel requested advice on how to make an online catalog for its small reading room collection of over 2,000 printed books and journals. When CTS staff members investigated, it was readily apparent that the group needed a solution for searching, shelving and maintaining their collection that did not rely on creating and loading catalog records into Voyager. CTS and Mann technical services staff, in collaboration with members of Cornell Hillel, have now introduced a free-standing Web-based catalog for the Hillel collection. The system permits both end-user OPAC searching and the administrative functions necessary for volunteers to add new records, change existing ones, and withdraw titles no longer held. Please check out the Hillel Catalog to view the collection. As a result of this collaboration, for the first time students can easily become aware of Hillel's collection, and the group's reading room stacks are manageable (in the prior arrangement of the shelves, it was difficult to know where to reshelve a title!). The president of Cornell Hillel notes that its members "are really excited about the library"--nice to hear from undergraduates, in our electronic world.

[reprinted from CUL Technical Services]