LIBRARY NEWS

~ Call ahead to use the Primate Center Library
~ The quirks of public service — Memorial Library statistics
~ Library Staff Service Award nominations due March 31
~ The latest additions to Digital Collections

NOTABLES

~ Knies named Collection Development Coordinator at WHS
~ Norcross renewed as distinguished member of AHIP
~ WAAL recognizes Loomis for Information Literacy efforts

FEATURES AND EVENTS

~ FELIX lecture to feature two poets March 31
~ Snow Miller Seminar to feature Reznick
~ Recasting Gutenberg Symposium April 7-8
~ Basbanes to speak at Friends Annual Lecture
~ ACRL Conference will feature Google.com digitization project manger
~ Memorial staff celebrate St. Patrick's Day

IN THE NEWS

~ Librarians quoted in Appleton-Post Crescent about digital archives

SNAPSHOTS

PUBLISHED

25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

LIBRARY NEWS

• Cynthia Robinson, director of the Primate Center Library, announced via e-mail March 7 that it will be necessary to call ahead if you wish to visit the Primate Center Library. Due to heightened concern about animal rights activities, the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center will be locked. Once you call the library, a staff member will meet you at the outside door and escort you into the library.
  
  
• Memorial Library public services staff collected information from Jan. 31 through Feb. 13 on all the questions they field from people in the library. This included at the reference desk, in personal offices, at the card window and even roaming the halls. The first day alone yielded 557 questions and more than 5,000 were collected during the two-week period. Listed below is a sampling of the quirky interactions that demonstrate some of the interesting avenues public services can take.
  Read examples of the information collected, showing what public service really entails
  
  
• Nominations for the new Library Staff Service Awards will be accepted through March 31. Six awards will be given this year; one Classified Staff Service Award of $1,000, one Academic Staff Service Award of $1,000 and four Student Staff Service Awards of $250 each. The General Library System created these awards with the support of the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries.
  
  The awards to recognize staff members who demonstrate exemplary working relationships with colleagues or other people in the libraries, contribute to a welcome learning and researching environment, exhibit high-productivity along with teamwork, leadership and cooperation. Staff members that show creativity, initiative and independence positively influencing library services and showing achievements and work that significantly benefit the library are also intended to be recognized with these awards.
  
  Questions should be directed to Associate Director Sandra Guthrie.
  Read more about the Library Staff Service Awards (Word document)
  
  
• In the past few weeks, Digital Content Group has added many new items to some of UW's Digital Collections.
  See what resources have been added to existing collections
  

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NOTABLES

• On April 4, Helmut Knies will begin his new position as the collection development coordinator for North American History at the Historical Society Library. Historical Society Library Director Peter Gottleib has said that Knies new position will involve strengthening partnerships with the General Library System and academic departments. GLS Associate Director for Collection Development and Technical Services Richard Reeb said he looks forward to Knies' participation in collection development activities and discussions.
  
  
• The Academy of Health Information Professionals renamed Natalie Norcross, associate director of Ebling Library, as a distinguished member. Recognition at this level means Norcross shows the highest standards of professional competency and achievement in health care information. AHIP is the Medical Library Associations peer-reviewed professional development and career recognition program.
  
  
• Library Information & Literacy Instruction Coordinator Abbie Loomis received the 2005 Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians Information Literacy Award. This is the second Information Literacy award given and WAAL noted in a spring newsletter that Loomis is "an exemplary academic librarian who has made significant contributions to advance information literacy." Loomis was a charter member of the WAAL Information Literacy Committee in 1997 has been instrumental in various WAAL programs throughout the state.
  

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FEATURES AND EVENTS

• The Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries will be hosting "FELIX: A Series of New Writing" at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in 126 Memorial Library. This FELIX lecture will feature readings by poet Anthony Hawley, associate fiction editor of the New York literary magazine Fence, and Joel Felix, co-editor of the Chicago poetry journal LVNG.
  
  Named after Felix Pollak (1909–1987), poet and former curator of Special Collections, this developing reading series invites young writers to provide a forum for conversation on the evolution of “little magazines” and their role in literary culture.
  Read more about the spring FELIX event
  
  
• The next lecture in the Snow Miller Seminar in Medical History will be "Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving in Britain During the Great War." Jeffrey S. Reznick, curator for collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, will speak on how the history of health sciences influence current practices. The lecture will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 31 in the Meriter Lecture Auditorium, Health Sciences Learning Center. Reznick's talk is contingent with the current exhibit at Ebling Library, Casualties Have Been Very Heavy: Medical Transport in the Great War, 1914-1918.
  
  
• Recent scholarship on Johann Gutenberg and early printing is the focus of a two-day symposium hosted by the Silver Buckle Press April 7-8 at UW-Madison's Memorial Library.
  
  The symposium, titled "Hot Type in a Cold World II: Recasting Gutenberg," presents a 21st-century look at the types used for the first printed book: the 42-line Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. In 1999, the Sunday Times of London and several similar publications and academic polls named Gutenberg the "Man of the Millennium."
  
  Events will include talks by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, founder, president and CTO of Sand Codex; Stan Nelson, museum specialist emeritus, Graphic Arts Collections, Smithsonian Institution; Theo Rehak, proprietor, Dale Guild Type Foundry; and Kitty Maryatt, Director, Scripps College Press. Nelson will also give the showcase presentation, "Recasting Gutenberg," at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7, which is cosponsored by the Friends.
  Read more about Recasting Gutenberg
  
  
  
• The Friends Annual Lecture will feature editor and author Nicholas Basbanes at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20. This year's lecture will be held at the Madison Club, 5 East Wilson Street. Basbanes has been called a certified bibliomaniac” and “the leading authority on books about books.” His first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, is now in its eighth edition with more than 80,000 copies in print. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995 and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Basbanes recently wrote the book, A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, and he also writes a monthly review of children’s books for Literary Features Syndicate, which he and his wife established in 1993.
  
  
• Adam Smith, Google.com's product manager, and John Wilkin, associate librarian at the University of Michigan were named the "hot topic" program speakers for the upcoming Association of College & Research Libraries Conference. They will be discussing Google.com's project to digitize major library collections. The ACRL conference is April 7-10 in Minneapolis, Minn.
  
  
• Dineen Grow, user services supervisor of Memorial Library, put together the 21st annual St. Patrick's Day party for Memorial Library staff March 17 in room 170 which was decked out in green. Originally a joke to liven up the dead of winter in 1984, Grow continued to organize the party every year and has managed to collect some pretty vivid and festive decorations. She is also involved in many Irish and Celtic activities in the community.
  View pictures from the St. Patrick's Day Party

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IN THE NEWS

• In an article published in the Appleton Post-Crescent March 15, GLS Director Ken Frazier, Memorial Library's Government Documents Reference Librarian Beth Harper and Historical Society Government Documents Librarian Nancy Mulhern discussed the issue of having government records available online. The article weighed the advantages and disadvantages of moving government records to digital archives, noting that the Wisconsin Historical Society is one of the 53 state libraries designated to hold federal and state government records.

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SNAPSHOTS

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PUBLISHED

• Fashioned Pleasures, the latest chapbook released by Parallel Press, is a collection of 24 sonnets that range in topic from the sea to a stalker's sentencing at trial. The common threads tying them together are the words ending each verse. All 24 poems are bouts-rimés, or poems that incorporate the rhyme words from another poem. The sonnets in Fashioned Pleasures use the rhyme words from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 20."
  Read more about Fashioned Pleasures

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25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

• The April 21, 1980 issue of Added Entries marked the passing of Former Library Director Rev. Gilbert H. Doane.
  
  "Former director of the UW Libraries and UW Library School, Rev. Gilbert H. Doane, aged 82, passed away on Friday, March 7, 1980, in Newton, Massachusetts, after a long illness. Rev. Doane, second full-time director of UW Libraries, served from 1937-1956, succeeding Walter M. Smith who, at the time of his retirement on February 1, 1937, had been a university librarian for 46 years."

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Quotation

"My guess is (it will be) about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in searches."

— Craig Silverstein (1973- ), director of technology for Google.com

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