LIBRARY NEWS

~ Geology Library undergoes renovation, temporarily moves
~ OCLC recognizes Live Help as a "Best Practice" for virtual reference
~ UW-Madison hosts IASSIST, DPLS staff helps organize conference
~ Women's Studies Office helps coordinate annual conference in Milwaukee
~ The Dewey family thanks library staffers

NOTABLES

~ Bibliographer Villar retires
~ Bike-to-Work Week give-a-way winner
~ Whitmire wins fellowship to study at UCLA
~ SLIS names alumnus of the year
~ Busch develops new online resource
~ Beebe joins Social Work Library staff

FEATURES AND EVENTS

IN THE NEWS

~ The Capital Times mentions WCFTR's role in Bordwell's success
~ Friends board member receives nod in The Capital Times
~ The Capital Times announces endowment to help Historical Society, WCFTR

SNAPSHOTS

PUBLISHED

~ Library & Information Literacy Instruction Program update
~ Rosneck publishes article on female Russian novelist
~ Special Collections' Pavelich lands top article in Progressive Librarian

25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

LIBRARY NEWS

• The Geology and Geophysics Library is closed for renovation through August. Services will still be available during normal library hours, through a temporary home at 470 Weeks Hall. Staff will be able to answer questions and provide access to some frequently used portions of the collection. Most print materials will be inaccessible, however, during the renovation. Electronic resources will continue to be available.
  
  
• The Online Computer Library Center named Live Help as one of the "Best Practices" in the nation for virtual reference. On their Web site, OCLC cited John Wanserski's case study of Wendt Library published in Internet Reference Service's Quarterly in the spring of 2003. OCLC determined that, as a Best Practice, UW-Madison Libraries are an example of libraries "doing it right." UW-Madison Libraries is one of two library systems with this distinction, the other being North Carolina State University Libraries.
  
  
• The 2004 International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology conference was held in Madison this year, using the Pyle Center and other locations on campus for various workshops and programs during the week of May 24. The conference, titled Data Futures: Building on 30 Years of Advocacy, allowed scholars, librarians and archivists to discuss how data is stored, distributed and processed in the digital age along with new issues and trends in data management and preservation. Cindy Severt of the Data and Program Library Service chaired the local committee that helped make the conference possible with the assistance of Lu Chou and Joanne Juhnke, both from DPLS, who were also on the committee. Students, faculty and staff of the Social Science and library departments were able to attend some sessions free by showing their UW-Madison ID.
  
  
• The annual conference for the National Women's Studies Association was hosted June 17-20 by the UW-Milwaukee Center for Women's Studies and the UW System Women's Studies Consortium with members of the UW System Women's Studies Librarian's Office helping out. The conference, titled Women in the Middle: Borders, Barriers and Intersections was meant to reflect "the many ways that women find themselves caught in the middle -- between generations, between demands of family and work, or aging parents and children, between various aspects of their own identity, between groups in which they are active. It also highlighted ways in which women have used their position creatively," according to the NWSA Web site. Phyllis Holman Weisbard, Women's Studies librarian, co-chaired the video series and Women's Studies Editor JoAnne Lehman was in charge of a zine display which included eclectic, underground types of publications. Stephanie Rytilahti, previously the Women's Studies intern and now a student assistant in the office, helped with both the zine and video projects. After the conference, the zines from Lehman's display will be donated to Memorial Library.
  
  

• Thank you from Bea and Gene Dewey Recently the First Baptist Church sent a check for $2,595 in memory of the Rev. Beth Dewey to the National Marrow Support Program. These funds were given by church family and UW Library colleagues when we were hopeful that Beth would be eligible for a stem cell transplant. These funds will now enable others to be tested, perhaps giving someone the chance of survival. Beth would consider it a great gift to her if someone else could be helped. We thank you all again for your generosity and abiding good will in the weeks since July 9, 2003. Sincerely, Bea and Gene Dewey

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NOTABLES

Luis Villar will retire this July from his duties as Ibero-American bibliographer after nearly six years. He is responsible for greatly enhancing the collection as well as working with electronic text citation, Web site design and presentation. Villar would prefer a quiet departure and therefore there will not be a farewell gathering. Paloma Celis Carbajal will be filling in until a replacement is formally hired.


• Library Communications Editing Intern Gabriel Miller won the commuter bike contest held for Bike-to-Work Week. Miller detailed his love for commuting and need for a new bike in a one-page essay. Memorial Library Graphics guru Dan Joe donated his old commuter bike for the contest and Ann Pollock of the Memorial Library reference department helped him select the winner. "Gabriel is the perfect recipient of Dan's bike, a truly committed bike commuter, someone who uses a bicycle for all of his transportation needs," Pollock says. "Dan must be pleased that his bike has found such a deserving new home."
  
  
• Assistant Professor for the School of Library & Information Studies Ethelene Whitmire won a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to study at the University of California-Los Angeles for one year. Whitmire will be studying the use of the libraries by undergraduates of color to determine if the library is a gathering place outside of class and living quarters while they attend school.
  
  
• The School of Library & Information Studies named Michael J. Fox as alumnus of the year during the May 15 graduation ceremony at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Fox is currently the assistant director of the Minnesota Historical Society and was a featured speaker at the graduation ceremony. Fox earned a bachelor's and master's degree from UW-Madison, graduating from SLIS with his masters in 1973. He went on to work at the Wisconsin Historical Society in various positions including cataloger, public records archivist and in the chief public records section before taking a position in Minnesota.
  
  
• A new resource is now available due to the hard work of Memorial Library's Nikki Busch. Finding Book Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences is meant to complement the existing Book Review guide available at College Library and includes both print and electronic resources. For the past month, Busch used her new cascading style sheet skills from a library workshop to make the new resource.The new guide is targeted toward Memorial Library patrons: graduate students, faculty and those interested in the humanities and social sciences. "The guide aims to direct patrons to and through the wide world of 'invisible Web' sites, where the majority of published book reviews actually reside," says Busch.
  
  
• The Social Work Library welcomed Kristin Beebe June 1 as a new research intern. Beebe just completed her MLS in May and previously worked at the SLIS library. She will be responsible for journal check-in, claims, bindery and other technical services duties including maintaining the library Web site, overseeing circulation and hiring new student staff.

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FEATURES AND EVENTS

• The 2004 Annual Teaching and Learning Symposium in May offered insights about information literacies for anyone involved in teaching and learning on campus. This year the symposium focused on the ability to identify and critically use information of all sorts and on many levels.
  Read more about the symposium.
  
  
• Mills Music Library announced a new exhibit featuring songwriter Joseph Philbrick Webster (1819-1875) in the spring issue of the Jongleur. More than 400 of Webster's sentimental, sacred and patriotic songs were published during his lifetime. He is most recognized for composing the gospel song "In the Sweet By and By" and the Civil War era tune "Lorena" which was popular on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. The exhibit also includes examples of his manuscripts, records and photographs of Webster's home in Elkhorn which is now a museum run by the Walworth County Historical Society.
  
  
• The Wisconsin Historical Society's poll of its Turning Points in Wisconsin History digital collection is complete. Memorial Day marked the end of the voting process in which anyone could vote for their favorite event in Wisconsin history. Nearly 109,000 votes from 3,656 voters will help determine which collections are assembled and developed into digital collections. According to the Web site, the most popular events were the "rise of dairy farming," "lumbering" and "the arrival of the first peoples" to the state. Historical Society staff will work to assemble and digitize manuscripts, rare books, historic photographs and other artifacts throughout summer and fall.

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IN THE NEWS

• In a May 19 article about UW-Madison Communication Arts Professor David Bordwell's retirement, The Capital Times noted that when film scholars were beginning to surface in academic areas, UW-Madison had a huge resource in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Started in 1960, the WCFTR helped spark film studies at UW-Madison, which began around 1973 when Bordwell joined the faculty. The article added that the WCFTR is the third largest archive of its kind in the United States, featuring entire studio catalogs ranging from the Warner Brothers to RKO.
  
  
• The Capital Times May 26 issue announced Evjue Foundation Inc. granted $35,000 to the Tandem Press to produce a video about the press. The article mentioned Friend of the UW-Madison Libraries board member Paula Panczenko, who is directing the video project. The foundation gave away $1.8 million in grants to various organizations, all made possible by a grant program designated in the will of William T. Evjue. Evjue founded, edited and published The Capital Times.
  
  
• In the campus notebook section, The Capital Times announced June 2 the National Endowment for the Humanities gave money to the Wisconsin Historical Society to start an endowment fund to preserve its archives and collections. The article mentioned that this also includes the holdings in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

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SNAPSHOTS

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PUBLISHED

• The May issue of the Verbal Assessment Bulletin focused on the entire campus and revealed faculty testimony of the benefits of the Verbal Assessment Project, assessments of the success of the project and a farewell from the project coordinator. The bulletin mentions results from the latest survey indicating that Internet search engines have become the way most students begin to conduct research. Also included in this issue are statistics from previous research as well as evidence from faculty members indicating the program's success in improving students' research methods. Every year, the Library & Information Literacy Instruction Program serves nearly 27,000 library users and teaches more than 2,300 instructional sessions. For more online resources and teaching tips from LILI, visit www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Instruction/infores.html.
  
  
• Karen Rosneck of CTS-Acquisitions and Serials in Memorial Library recently added another published article to her credit. The article, titled "Ol'ga Andreevna Shapir, 1850-1916," was published as part of Russian Writers of the Silver Age, 1890-1925, a recent volume in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. The article discusses Shapir, a popular novelist who also played a prominent role in the recent Russian women's movement. Rosneck previously translated the Russian book "The Boarding-School Girl," which was published in 2000.
  
  
• David Pavelich of Special Collections wrote the top article that will appear in the soon-to-be-released Spring/Summer 2004 issue of the Progressive Librarian. Pavelich said he feels his article "The Scarf-and-Mitten Adventure: Emergent Poetry and the Library" is analagous to "FELIX: A new series of writing," which he helped organize with Barry Osborne, a recent SLIS graduate working for the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries.

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25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

• The April 15, 1979, issue of Added Entries revealed a story of a professor who discovered personal information while he was indexing a Serbian newspaper for the libraries. "Robert Gakovich, assistant professor and the head of the Slavic Cataloging Team, and Milan Radovich, Slavic acquisition librarian, are researching and selectively indexing the 1906 to 1976 issues of the American Srbobran newspaper. It is the oldest continuously published daily Serbian-American paper in the United States. ... Bob Gakovich's father, an Orthodox Serbian priest who was killed in Yugoslavia in 1941 by the Ustashi (Croatian extremist nationalists), lived for a time in the United States. In addition to creating a bibliographic tool for students of American ethnic minorities, project research has brought to light information about Bob's father, and even a photograph."

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Quotation

"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries."

—Stephen King (1947-), American author

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