Bringing Individuals and Information Together

IRIS News & Notes
October 2002

Contents:

Craig Mains' beautiful image of Uris Tower captures the essence of October, the month of dark mornings, vivid blue skies, and the Hunter Moon. In the interesting—but not particularly relevant—category, did you know each full moon has its own name? You too can wow friends and calm your enemies by sharing the following information.

Here's what's new from the past month.

Collections Coordination and Support Services
As recently announced on CU-Lib, Yoram Szekely will direct a new administrative unit within IRIS: Collections Coordination and Support Services, effective this month. Yep, the title is a mouthful, but the development of this new unit reflects current and emerging realities for collection development in Olin and Uris, including the distribution of selection responsibilities among 20 individuals. In addition to Yoram, the unit includes the bibliographers and support staff in collection development and Gifts and Exchange. As Director, Yoram joins the IRIS Cabinet, where he represents collections services. (Take a look at his mug shot in the rogue's gallery.)

New Committees
Three new committees have been formed in the last month. The first, appointed by PSEC and chaired by Nancy McGovern, will be studying the concept of Convenient Business Hours. The Working Group members include Carmen Blankinship, Meryl Brodsky, Marty Crowe, Susan Currie, Nan Hyland, Boodie McGinnis, and Steve Rockey. This group has been charged with developing a plan—to be implemented by April 1—to address user concerns regarding library hours and access to services. We know from previous user input that the phrase convenient business hours means different things to different user groups in different library contexts. The Working Group will gather additional data about user preferences to define and prioritize potential adjustments and enhancements to address user concerns, and to balance the possible against available resources. All CUL units have been invited to participate in the study. Data collection will proceed across CUL during the fall semester, including a user questionnaire that will be distributed in October and November. For information about the study as it progresses, look for updates at: www.library.cornell.edu/iris/research/projects.html.

The second new group, chaired by Yoram Szekely, is the IRIS Task Force on Student Employment. Units throughout IRIS report that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit and retain student workers to fill critical positions. Over the next six months, this task force will investigate the situation, determine its causes, and propose recommendations to the IRIS Management Group. The Task Force members include: Lyndsi Fieno, Chris Bucko, Penny Spoonhower, and John Marmora.

The third group is the IRIS Sign Committee, which is charged with developing a process within IRIS for requesting new signs, establishing a common look and feel, and defining consistent procedures. The committee will also consult with other divisions in Olin, Kroch, and Uris about signs directing the public to other units. Chris Bucko will chair the committee and its members include: Susan Argetsinger, Craig Mains, Ida Martinez, Bethany Silfer, and Sharon Wargo, with Susan Currie and Carla DeMello serving as ex officio members. This committee builds upon the excellent work of Martha Walker, Craig Mains, and Chris Bucko, who constituted an earlier sign committee. Martha has kindly agreed to serve as a consultant to this new group. The approved process and procedures will be posted on the IRIS site.

Olin Hours to Be Extended on Fridays
Thanks to additional support from Sarah Thomas, we're pleased to announce that Olin Library will soon remain open Friday evenings until 9pm.
This change will become effective right after Fall break, on October 18.

Digitization Service to Occupy 106 F & G in Olin
Two offices (the former Reference Processing Room and the Office of Distributed Learning) are being converted to house the new Cornell Library Digitization Service under the auspices of CIDC. This service, which will be managed by Barbara Eden, will provide diverse conversion capabilities for faculty and library projects. According to Tom Hickerson, the Digitization Service should be operational by early November. The new space will also serve as the administrative office for Digital Consulting and Production Services (DCAPS), under the direction of Oya Rieger. DCAPS will include the Library's new copyright services unit.

Creation Station Lab in Kirby Room
The Creations Stations are now in their new home in the Kirby Room on the Gallery Level of Uris Library. This lab offers three workstations and digital cameras for the production of course-related multimedia presentations.

Grants Received
The Echols Collection has been awarded a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for $281,449 to conduct a two-year project, entitled "Images of Southeast Asia." The project will foster emerging trends in teaching and research as well as increase general awareness of the region by creating a digital collection of 140,000 pages of text and 10,000 illustrations taken from Western travel narrations written from the early 17th century to the first quarter of the 20th century. This first large-scale digitization project of Southeast Asian content will explore several important aspects of digital presentation and use. The project will use ENCompass to manage, integrate, and deliver text and images from the database. The outcome will be a resource of great scope and depth, useful to the general public, scholars, and in the classroom. Allen Riedy will serve as Principal Investigator. This successful proposal was truly a collaborative effort involving individuals from IRIS (Preservation, Research as well as Echols), D-Lit, and Technical Services. A Web page will be established for the project.

Congratulations are also in order to D-Lit, which received a $471,724 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for a collaborative three-year project to develop and test a metadata structure for the Global Performing Arts Database. Other participants in this grant include the Museum of the City of New York, San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Music (Russia), the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater, and the University of Washington Libraries. In addition, Cornell University has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a digital collection of historical machine models for the National Science Digital Library that will provide educators, students, researchers, and the general public with tools for exploring the mathematical motions of machines: the science of kinematics. The collection will be geared for educational use at the middle school, secondary, and university levels.This project is a collaboration of librarians, professors of mathematics and mechanical engineering, and education specialists at Cornell and John Saylor, will serve as the Principal Investigator and Kizer Walker as project manager.

Wason Display Inaugurates New Exhibition Location
The first of the Olin/Kroch Alley exhibits—in the corridor just outside 106—is planned for this month and will run Oct. 9-31st. The exhibit will highlight holdings on China, Japan, and Korea. On display will be treasures from the personal collection of Charles W. Wason on Chinese history, such as the HMS Lion log book, the scrapbook of a missionary based in China between 1860 and 1872, samples from the famous pamphlet collection, and material related to the first Opium War in 1840-41. Early Japanese titles from both the Maeda and Griffis collections will also be displayed, as will be our oldest printed title in Korean, dated 1831. Also included will be Andy Warhol's Chairman Mao portrait—representing the artist's transformation of a revered political leader into a pop icon at the height of the infamous Cultural Revolution (1972).

New Staff, New Locations
We are pleased to welcome two new staff to the IRIS fold. The first, Marty Crowe, is no stranger to CUL. She has joined the Research Department where she will focus her efforts on background research, grant preparation, and the editing of RLG DigiNews, which the Research Department produces under an annual contract with RLG. Marty's new office is in 217 Olin Library.

The second is Valerie Jacoski who has joined the IRIS administrative staff and will be providing technical and Web support. She will also serve on the IRIS IT Committee. Valerie is located in 215 Olin and will be working 9:00-1:00 Monday through Friday. Although she doesn't yet have a Net ID, her number is 254-7424.

Other staff are moving to new offices:
David Block has taken up residence in his new office in Room 170 Kroch Library.
Lynn Thitchener has moved from 106 F to accommodate the new digitization service and is temporarily located in an office in B19 Olin until space in 106 E can be reconfigured.

Coming Soon! The Loo Report
Brace yourself, but somewhere about mid-month there will a new publication coming from IRIS called The Loo Report (yes, that's the right title). This one-pager will appear in strategic locations in bathrooms in Uris Library. The inspiration for this publication came during a visit last spring to the University of Virginia where I was quite taken by their bathroom publication, Stall Talk. The idea is to take the 30 seconds or so when we have a captive audience to provide information on library services and news. The first issue will spotlight changes in Uris and is being edited by Kim LaMorte and designed by Craig Mains.

That's it, perhaps that's more than enough for one month. If not, drop me a line with your suggestions and comments.

Anne

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