Bringing Individuals and Information Together

IRIS News & Notes
November 2002

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By the time you read this, I’ll have arrived in the , where I’m giving the keynote address at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on Preservation of Digital Heritage for Asia and the Pacific.

Australia. Home to the Sydney Opera House, Aboriginal art, kangaroos, and the hugest bats I’ve ever seen. When Oya Rieger and I were there in 1998 doing some workshops, we encountered these suckers in the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. These bats—also known as flying foxes—are easily 2 feet in length and congregate in trees by the thousands. Click on the images above for photo-documentation from our trip. I don’t know about Oya, but I’m still having nightmares featuring the attack of the giant bats.

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

Guidelines on Reserves approved by PSEC
At its October 23 meeting, the Public Services Executive Committee approved the new “Reserve Policies: Library Staff Guidelines,” prepared by the Access Services Steering Committee. These cover both print and electronic reserve and indicate the Library’s capability to assist faculty in obtaining copyright permissions. The new guidelines have been posted to the Access Services Information Web page.

Committee Updates

Convenient Business Hours
As reported last month, the Working Group on Convenient Business Hours is developing a plan to address user concerns regarding library hours and access to services. The Working Group is busy gathering information across CUL. Within IRIS, we will be doing building counts for all hours that Olin, Kroch Asia, Uris, Fine Arts, Music, and Africana libraries are open during the following two weeks:
November 3 - 9
December 1 - 7
At the same time each hour, staff will count and record the number of patrons in all public areas. This method was used quite successfully in various libraries, including Uris and Mann, in determining whether to extend hours.

IRIS Task Force on Student Employment becomes CUL Task Force
Last month we reported the establishment of a new group, the IRIS Task Force on Student Employment. Readers of IRIS News & Notes, including Janet McCue and Jean Poland, suggested that the study be extended to all of CUL. LMT agreed, and I’m happy to report that a CUL task force has been appointed. It will be co-chaired by Yoram Szekely and Lyndsi Fieno. The Task Force members include: Lois Purcell, Penny Spoonhower, John Marmora, Margie Ditmars, and Joanne Leary.

Committee on Undergraduate Book Collecting Contest
With support from the Library Advisory Council, Cornell is reviving a tradition of acknowledging the art of book collecting. A committee has been formed to plan and organize an award celebrating reading and honoring undergrads who collect. The members are: Lance Heidig (Chair), David Corson (RMC), Jim Morris-Knower (Mann), Katherine Reagan (RMC), and Cara Yates (External Relations). Marisue Taube will advise the group, as will Yoram Szekely, who managed CUL’s earlier book competition, the Dean Student Book Collecting Contest, from 1966-1987. Arthur Dean, an alumnus of Cornell and former US Ambassador to Korea, was also a long-time supporter of the Library and the University. Stay tuned for more information on this new contest.

Committee on Cultural Events Creates Four Sub-Committees
The work of the Committee on Cultural Events has been apportioned to four subcommittees: New & Noteworthy Books, Olin Library Exhibits, Events, and Publicity. Click here to see their charges and the names of subcommittee members.

Director of Instruction Search
The search for a Director of Instruction, who will head a new department within IRIS, is well underway. The Search Committee, chaired by Erla Heyns, will be bringing four candidates to campus in the coming month for day and a half interviews. The candidates and schedule are as follows:

• November 14 - 15, David Levin, Director of Distance Learning, DePaul University
• November 18 - 19, Eric Jul, most recently Executive Director of the OCLC Institute
• November 21 - 22, Feili Tu, Assisant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University
• TBD, Deirdre Stam, Director New York Center for Books and Reading Syracuse University Library.

The schedule for the interviews will be announced very soon. In addition to meetings with various groups, each candidate will make a public presentation, which I urge as many of you who can to attend. Members of the search committee include: Bill Arms (computer science), Tony Cosgrave, Nancy McGovern, Oya Rieger, and Ira Revels.

IRIS Web Site Improved
Take time to check out the recent additions to the IRIS Web site. What you’ll notice are changes to the navigation features and some new links. We now have a directory to IRIS departments and unit libraries; a site index providing an alphabetical listing of topics (thanks, Valerie Jacoski!); and the Committee page has been updated to reflect the new committees. I’m beginning to think of this site as the internal staff Web for IRIS. As with many things, this is a work in progress. Send us your thoughts on how we might improve it.

Grants Received
The Department of Preservation and Collection Maintenance has been awarded a $170,000 grant from The Ford Foundation to conduct a two-year research and demonstration project entitled “Investigation of Hermetic Sealing as a Means of Extending the Life of Film-based Materials.” This promising storage method currently utilized for packing foodstuffs could prove invaluable for preserving microform masters in developing countries that lack the necessary resources to employ western methods of environmental control. Cornell will work with Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology in a two-phased effort to document environmental conditions in Southeast Asian countries and Cuba and to provide a definitive scientific review of the appropriateness of hermetic sealing technology for long-term storage of microforms. If the technology proves viable, the project team will produce practical instructions and specifications on its use and application. John Dean is the Principal Investigator for this project.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant to the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) for a project entitled: Political Communications Web Archiving. Cornell University Library will be one of four universities subcontracting with CRL to explore the curatorship, technology, and long-term resource management components of the project. The other project participants include New York University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Internet Archive. At CUL, the project will provide partial support for a programmer, a digital projects researcher, and a metadata specialist. Nancy McGovern will serve as the Principal Investigator for the Cornell portion of the project, and Allen Riedy will provide subject area expertise. This project will continue the work of some aspects of Project Prism, expanding upon a case study using a series of Web resources that were selected by the Echols Collection. The project will explore a range of topics, including issues pertaining to the navigation and presentation of stored versions of Web sites over time and metadata requirements for the long-term retention of Web resources. Ongoing information about the project will be available at the Research Web site.

Olin Library Gets Medieval
This month Cornell will be hosting the annual conference of the Haskins Society, which is dedicated to the study of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early Angevin history. Coinciding with this conference, IRIS will be mounting an exhibit in Olin that highlights the CU Medieval Studies Program. The exhibit features past and present faculty and student activities and publications. New & Noteworthy Books will highlight CU Medieval Studies publications from the collection for patrons to browse and check out. The exhibit is being curated by Virginia Cole, who has recently assumed selection responsibilities for Medieval Studies. In addition, Susan Greaves will display medieval maps and modern maps of medieval topics from the Map Collection in the lower level of Olin.

New Staff
We are pleased to welcome two new staff and a Conservation Fellow.
Paul McMillin has joined the Olin Uris Reference Services Division of IRIS in a 2-year appointment. Paul is no stranger to Olin, having served for four years as Reference Assistant in OKU Reference Services before heading off to graduate school. Joe Richardson is providing IT support for IRIS on a temporary basis. Joe is located in Olin 215 and works noon to 4:00 PM. Hyejung Yum is the new Getty Postgraduate Conservation Fellow and will be working with Tatyana Petukhova at the paper conservation facility at the annex for the next year.

That’s the news for this month. Oh, and for you fans of The Loo Report, click here to view the first installment. Better yet, experience the real thing in situ the next time you visit Uris Library. I’ll be back on November 8. In the meantime, keep your comments and questions coming.

Anne

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