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Online Preservation Tutorial in Arabic
With the help of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Department of Preservation and Collection Maintenance has developed an Arabic-language online preservation tutorial dedicated to the treatment and care of books and manuscripts. (Any views or recommendations expressed in this tutorial do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.)

The current tutorial is based on CUL’s valuable and popular online preservation tutorial created some time ago for Southeast Asia but includes many changes in the text to more accurately reflect the special needs of the Middle East. For example, because the Arabic-speaking world extends through a variety of climate zones, information on arid areas has been added to existing information on hot and humid areas to offer a more-balanced view of the problems of climate in the entire region, from coastal areas to those in the interior.

The main thrust of the tutorial is toward managing a modern library preservation program, and the indigenous materials section provides a useful context for libraries and archives and stresses care of some of the cultural artifacts in many library and archives collections. In a preservation course taught in July in Amman, Jordan, librarians and archivists from Iraq reported that the tutorial would fill a much-needed niche for them in the literature of preservation.

Although the tutorial was developed principally to assist the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the use of Arabic is important, as it is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world and makes the tutorial appropriate for librarians, archivists, and conservators in Egypt, the Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, the United Arab Republic, Oman, and Lebanon.

Law Library Celebrates Its 700,000th Volume
On September 23 the Law Library celebrated the acquisition of its 700,000th volume and the five volumes leading up to that milestone. Timed to coincide with the visit of the Law School Advisory Council, the event included books by Professors Clermont, Hillman, Simson, Wippman, and Schwab. The 700,000 th was Form and Function in a Legal System—A General Study, by Professor Bob Summers. Sarah Thomas welcomed the guests, while Claire Germain discussed the accomplishments of the library and faculty alike. Schwab delivered remarks on the Summers book and presented a framed bookplate to Sheppard A. Guryan, J.D. ’67. The book was purchased with funds from the Sheppard Guryan Law Library Endowment on the History of Jurisprudence and American Legal Thought. Sheppard Guryan is one of several very generous Law Library donors on the Advisory Council. It was truly a great event for the Cornell Law Library, Law School, and the Advisory Council.

From left: Sarah Thomas; Law School Dean Stewart Schwab; Professor Bob Summers; Law School Advisory Council member Sheppard Guryan, J.D. ’67; Joan P. Guryan; and Claire Germain

© Sheryl D. Sinkow Photography

Mann’s Lobby Goes Multimedia
In August, Mann unveiled a new marketing and publicity tool in its entryway—a forty-inch LCD monitor. The flat-panel unit is positioned so that patrons entering the front doors walk directly toward its bright screen, making its rotating display of images hard to miss. The images themselves, served up randomly via a screen saver program, advertise library events, workshops, reference services, and national and world news via RSS feeds.

C. Herbert Finch Honored with State Archives Award
HerbFinch, a former assistant director of the Library and former president of the History Center in Tompkins County, was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the New York State Board of Regents and the New York State Archives. Herb was also recently recognized by the History Center in Tompkins County with an award bearing his name: the C. Herbert Finch Award for Excellence. Herb passed away in April, 2005.

The award was accepted on Herb’s behalf by his long-time friend G. David Brumberg, the Cornell University American History Librarian Emeritus on October 6 at the State Education Building in Albany. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the State Archives. It pays tribute to significant, long-lasting contributions to the identification, accessibility, and use of historical records in New York. This is only the second time the award has been presented since its inception in 1991.

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