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Kudos

Kristine M. Alpi, MLS, MPH, AHIP, has been appointed associate library director of the Samuel J. Wood Library and the C.V. Starr Biomedical Information Center at the rank of associate librarian. She is responsible for the day-to-day oversight management of all program areas, budget and finance, human resources, facilities, and planning. Kristine also continues to hold an appointment as lecturer in public health with the WCMC Department of Public Health. Previously she served as the administrative manager of the Public Health Library, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Prior to that she was the information services librarian here at the Medical Library from 2000 to 2002; the education coordinator with the Middle Atlantic Region, NN/LM (1998-1999); and an associate fellow at the National Library of Medicine (1997-1998). Kristine can be reached at kma2002@med.cornell.edu or 212-746-6504.

Phil Davis just got an article accepted for publication in Journal of the American Society for Information Science (JASIST): “eJournal Interface Can Influence Usage Statistics: Implications for Libraries, Publishers, and Project COUNTER,” by Philip M. Davis and Jason S. Price.

On July 20 Claire M. Germain, the Edward Cornell Law Librarian & Professor of Law, took office as president of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) at the organization’s annual meeting held in San Antonio. Claire will preside over a national organization with over 5,000 members from academic, court, law firm, and corporate law libraries. Her one-year term coincides with AALL’s 100th Anniversary. Special centennial celebrations are in the works for the 2006 annual meeting in St. Louis.

Claire selected the theme “Pioneering Change” for her term and will encourage members to actively communicate the value of law libraries to significant decision makers. She urges members to take advantage of the VIP Program and invite key players to the 2006 AALL Meeting, where the accomplishments of the profession and the challenges faced by law librarianship will both be on display. “Law librarians must be the catalysts for enhancing the perceptions of law librarianship,” stated Claire. “Strategic alliances, collaboration, and cooperation are needed to shape the future of the profession.”

Anne Kenney has been asked to serve on the Advisory Committee for Portico, an electronic archiving service that is being developed with support from JSTOR, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Ithaka to address the long-term preservation of electronic resources. Working with libraries and publishers, the goal is to develop a sustainable service that balances the interests of scholars, publishers, and libraries. The committee will hold its first meeting in September.

Nancy McGovern has been appointed to serve on the LOCKSS Alliance Technical Policy Committee. The five-person committee will begin holding conference calls in September. The group has been convened to serve until a technical policy is developed and the resulting document has been approved by the LOCKSS Alliance Board.

In the May issue of Inside CUL, it was reported that Sasha Skenderija, the research technology coordinator at the Law Library, had been awarded a prestigious Fulbright scholarship in the Senior Specialist Program. Sasha used the award for travel in June to Prague, where he is serving as a consultant for the transformation of several national and university libraries into the new National Library of Technology (NTL). Using his experiences at Law and other major research libraries for a potential development model, he presented workshops at the State Tech Library (STL) in Prague and the Library of Palacky University in Olomouc, as well as a session at STL for the staffs of Czech Technical University and the Institute of Chemical Technology (both in Prague). The new NTL, building on the experience of the Virtual Polytechnic Library, will be a national network of scientific and academic research libraries with international outreach and postgraduate training.

But perhaps the biggest honor for Sasha was to present one of the keynote lectures at the 12th International Czech and Slovak Library Information Network (CASLIN) Seminar, an annual conference where Sarah Thomas had given a keynote address in 1999. This year the topic was new trends in information management and services. An added benefit of travel made possible by the Fulbright was a visit for Sasha to Bosnia for the first time since he escaped during the siege of Sarajevo late in 1992. On July 4, a holiday known to us as Independence Day, but known to Sasha as his birthday, Sasha attended a poetry reading of his newest collection, Why the Dwarf Had to Be Shot, a reading that included the author of the English translation of his work, Wayles Browne, a Cornell associate professor of linguistics.

Kornelia Tancheva, Michael Cook, and Howard Raskin had an article published in the June 2005 issue of the Journal of Extension. “Serving the Public: The Academic Library and Cooperative Extension,” describes the successful design and implementation of various outreach services for Extension, including information literacy, Web-based instruction, reference, and document delivery.

Congratulations to Susanne Whitaker for being named a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals. AHIP is the Medical Library Association’s peer-reviewed professional development and career recognition program, denoting the highest standards of professional competency.

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