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President's Musings
Greetings CARL Members,
The past three months have passed in a whirlwind; I can't believe I am halfway through my presidency. The saying, "Time flies when you're having fun" totally applies here. The high point for me in April was the CARL Conference at the Marriott Mission Bay in San Diego. Oh My GOSH! I can't believe I only had to pay a nominal fee for such a fantastic time. This conference experience allowed me to: connect with dear friends and colleagues and meet new ones; network with vendors; learn more about topics of great interest to me (action research, peer learning communities, instructional design and threshold concepts, to name a few). I was totally invigorated by our keynote speaker Jenica Rogers' provocative presentation on change, and by talks given by invited speakers Elisabeth Leonard, Char Booth, and Brian Matthews; their innovative perspectives on innovation and threshold concepts were excellent. We had exceptional poster sessions, lightning rounds and discussions, as well as virtual, un-conference, preconference, and listen-and-learn presentations. Many thanks to our presenters.
My highest praise goes to the conference organizing team, Allison Carr, Brena Smith, Joseph Aubele, and Kelly Janousek who worked tirelessly to bring everyone an excellent conference experience AND THEY DID! Attendee feedback echoed this sentiment. One person said, ìIt was one of the best conferences Iíve been to lately, including last yearís ACRL conference.î Another commented, ìThis was the best CARL conference Iíve been to! Really, KUDOS to the committee (and no, I wasnít on or paid by the committee, lol!).î If you attended, you have access to the virtual conference. For more feedback on the conference, read the post-cap article farther down in this newsletter.
For the remainder of this year, I will focus my efforts on forwarding conversations about the CARL infrastructure and our CARL conference goals, outcomes and structure. As we work on these issues, look forward to updates in the September and December newsletters.
For many of you, this academic year has come to a close or is nearly done. The summer will hopefully allow you to recharge your batteries and gear up for the next year. The economic outlook has cast a pall on what we can do, but we are a resilient group and often find ways to serve our constituencies and stakeholders well, despite difficult times. Last month, our college was honored to host Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association (now known as the United Farm Workers). She had the audience shout the phrase she coined, "Sí se puede" (Spanish for "Yes, we can"). As we relax from an often stressful year, I remind you, as information specialists and experts in our information society: Sí, se puede!
- Stephanie
Submitted by Stephanie Brasley, Los Angeles Southwest College, CARL President
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CARL Business
Interest Group (IG) members may have noticed some new wording on the CARL Event Budget Planner/Statement form (see line 53 on the form). Some history may prove helpful in understanding the change: in the past, IGs were not always successful at estimating costs, so the CARL Executive Board decided to include this item as a 10% estimate of total costs to cover unexpected expenses. This was back in the “coal-fired" days of computing. By 2010, IGs were doing a very good job of estimating expenses, in part because we are all doing our due diligence to make sure that programs are self-sustaining. Yeah for us!
But what has also happened is that CARL’S costs of insuring the IG programs, and providing accounting and web services for the programs, has gone up! So this 10% cost has transitioned from an estimate of unexpected expenses to an overhead cost. By way of comparison, the ACRL charges 25% overhead. As CARL’s Treasurer, I hope this clears up any questions about the necessity of the 10% overhead charge in line 53 of the Event Budget Planner/Statement form.
Submitted by Pam Howard, San Francsico State University, CARL Treasurer
Membership stands at 444, with 52 new or renewing members since March 15, 2012. Of these, 396 are regular members, nine are retired members and 39 are student members.
Interest Group Memberships:
ABLE: 73
CARLDIG: 255
CARLIT: 149
CDIG: 117
DIAL: 83
SCIL: 213
SEAL: 77
TSIG: 59
Submitted by Kelly Janousek, California State University, Long Beach, CARL Membership Director.
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CARL Conference 2012
Photo courtesy of Ned Fielden, San Francisco State University
The CARL 2012 Conference, Creativity and Sustainability: Fostering User-Centered Innovation in Difficult Times, was a blast! The synergy and all-around good vibe will be felt for some time! Here is a peek at some of the highlights:
Over 220 librarians attended the CARL biennial conference at the beautiful Marriott Hotel at Mission Bay in sunny San Diego, California, April 5-7, 2012. The conference featured an outstanding line-up of speakers whose talks embodied the conference theme. Nearly 50% of attendees provided feedback on the conference so that we can continue to bring quality professional development experiences to our colleagues. Thank you!
On April 5, 2012, attendees had the opportunity to attend pre-conferences on instructional design theories with an emphasis on David Merrill's Component Display Theory model; innovative approaches to teaching information literacy contextualized from a business perspective; and action research and peer learning communities.
The official conference kicked off that evening with an array of activities to engage and inform attendees: vendor/exhibitor tables, virtual and print poster sessions, 5-minute lightning rounds and networking opportunities. It was a loud and lively evening that set the stage for a wonderful conference experience!
Photos courtesy of Ned Fielden, San Francisco State University
On April 6, 2012, Jenica Rogers, Director of Libraries at the State University of New York, Potsdam, gave a provocative keynote address:"Saying Yes: Building innovative libraries by killing fear and getting the job done," which provided innovative strategies for leadership and management. Later that day, Elisabeth Leonard (Sage Publications) gave a riveting presentation entitled, "Strategic Innovation: More than a myth?", in which she talked about her research on innovation in libraries and outlined characteristics of innovators. On April 7th, we rounded out the conference with invited speakers Char Booth (Claremont Colleges) and Brian Mathews (Virginia Tech) who gave an engaging and innovative talk on threshold concepts and curriculum mapping. Throughout the two days, excellent presenters grew our collective knowledge base with talks and discussions on innovative and sustaining topics.
In addition to exciting sessions and plenty of good food, CARL also presented awards: the CARL Outstanding Member Award, the Ilene Rockman CARL/ACRL Scholarship Award and the CARL research Award. For more information on the winners, please visit the web site.
This year, the conference team introduced two new conference events for attendees: the Virtual Conference and the Unconference. Both were well-received. One conference-goer remarked, "I think the value of the virtual conference is exceptional when travel limits many people from attending, as well as the ability to review at a later time. The unconference was a refreshing break from the norm. Thanks for both!" On the Virtual Conference, other comments included: "Loved the Virtual, it allowed people from my institution to 'attend'" and, "I loved the Virtual Conference! Gave me a chance to participate even though I could not be there in person the whole time." Of the Unconference, it was said, "I think the Unconference sessions were nice because it gave the attendees from diverse backgrounds [a chance] to share experiences and opinions", and "This was my first unconference experience, and I really liked the open format. Young and John did an excellent job." An attendee provided this perspective: "The unconferences were extremely useful for me and other new professionals and mlis students. They provided a less-intimidating atmosphere and many opportunities to connect with peers and more experienced professionals."
Responding to a question about what they thought most beneficial, conference attendees made diverse comments, including:
"Relevant discussions in a small venue"
"Networking was invaluable"
"Line-up of speakers and excellent organization of the event"
"Speakers were excellent. The pace was great."
"Lots of good sessions. I got at least one idea from each"
We also took note of your suggestions for improvements. An attendee remarked, "My online criticism would be, although it was really fun and very well attended, the Thursday evening reception-cum-posters-cum-lightning rounds proved chaotic held in one place." Well said! We will review and attend to that along with suggestions on the registration process timely distribution of information on the conference web site.
The first line of the CARL mission states that CARL's purpose is "to provide opportunities for the professional growth of its members." The organizing team lead by Allison Carr and Brena Smith, Co-Conference Chairs, produced a phenomenal professional learning experience. The conference proceedings and the virtual conference videos are available now on the web site. Be sure to visit often!
Submitted by Stephanie Brasley, Los Angeles Southwest College, CARL President
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Interest Group News
 The SEAL-S Spring Adventure Program at the L.A. County Arboretum on April 14, 2012, brought 13 participants together for a day of behind-the-scenes peeks at orchids, peacocks and rare books. It was the day after a heavy rain, but the sun and the distinctive cry of peacocks met participants at the beautiful Arboretum.
The Arboretum Librarian, Susan Eubank, welcomed us to the library and introduced our group to Jim Henrich, Senior Biologist. Jim shared a wealth of information while taking us on a tour of the Orchid Collection, discussing: how orchids are brought into the collection; how to distinguish among the different varieties of orchids; and how the state-of-the-art greenhouse works to automatically adapt to subtle changes in temperature, sunlight, and humidity to keep the thriving collection healthy. The group then headed over to the herbarium, which is the Arboretum's collection of preserved plant specimens. Jim did a great job framing the collections, both living and non-living, in the context of librarianship. He went over the various cataloging rules and procedures that govern plant collections and also talked about the precautions taken to carefully store every part of the plant. Jim was very informative and entertaining, and after a quick lunch the group returned to the Arboretum Library.
Susan, the librarian, had laid out a diverse collection of plant-related books and periodicals on a long table and the group sat and listened as she went over her career history, her love of plants, and the challenges of leading an arboretum library. She also brought out an impressive sampling of rare books, including one very large book that one of the participants had used for a Master's thesis on trees.
Afterward, the group participants were free to tour the library, walk the arboretum grounds or take a picture of one of the fearless native peacocks. Everyone seemed to enjoy the combination of beautiful plants and interesting books!
Catherine Vu, California State University, Fullerton, Program Chair, SEAL-S
When: Friday, November 30, 2012
Where: PUENTE Learning Center, East Los Angeles
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (TBD)
On Friday, November 30th, CARLDIG-S and PUENTE Learning Center will co-host a half-day workshop, “Building Bridges: Academic Reference Services in the Community” at PUENTE Learning Center in East Los Angeles. Workshop attendees will hear from different presenters about academic librarians forming partnerships with other higher education institutions, within their own academic community or with their surrounding community. These partnerships may be designed, for example, to help support first-generation college students, foster an interest in college and research in young people, or provide reference services to low-income and diverse community populations. A call for presenters will go out later in the summer, so watch your email and listservs.
For more information, please contact Adolfo Prieto at (657) 278-5238 or aprieto@fullerton.edu. We hope to see you there!
Submitted by Angela Boyd, UC Santa Barbara
CARLDIG-South was thrilled to sponsor a Discussion Session at this year's CARL Conference in San Diego. On April 7, 2012, approximately 70 librarians and library school students attended "Where are the Librarians? Innovative Approaches to Reference and Instruction, and Implications for the Librarian's Role." Featured panelists were Brett Bodemer, General Education Instruction and Reference Coordinator at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Shahla Bahavar, Director, Public Services Division I at University of Southern California (USC); and Lise Snyder, Collection Management Coordinator for College Library at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Each panelist spoke for 10 minutes, and then the floor opened up for participants in attendance to provide questions and comments.
First, Brett Bodemer discussed the LibRAT (Library Research Assistance Technician) program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which employs undergraduate students in the areas of reference and instruction. He emphasized the pedagogical values in peer-to-peer teaching in both reference and instruction. Brett discussed the training, assessment and success he has experienced in implementing this model and stated that undergraduate students not only can, but should provide reference and instruction.
Next, Shahla Bahavar discussed the tiered staffing model used at USC's Leavey Library service desk, which utilizes Student Navigation Assistants (SNAs), librarians and computer consultants. Librarians and computer consultants are available during certain hours, while the SNAs staff the desk all hours the library is open. This tiered model utilizes SNAs to answer basic questions, while training them to refer more challenging queries to the librarians and computer questions to the computer consultants. This tiered model has been developed and adjusted over time and has been successfully used at USC for eighteen years.
Finally, Lise Snyder reflected on the changes the librarian profession has had in reference and instruction work, as well as changes in reference and instruction staffing patterns. She spoke of the varied positive and negative results of these changes and asserts that as a profession, there are some questions that need to be carefully addressed: What is a librarian's work in reference and instruction? How is the librarianís role different? Where does their specific expertise come into play? Is there a growing sense that librarians are not really necessary to providing excellent user service in these areas?
Following the panelistsí brief presentations, Angela Boyd, Reference Services Librarian at California State University, Santa Barbara, moderated a discussion involving questions and comments from the audience. Attendees shared their views on these creative approaches that advocate the use of students in the provision of reference services. Many attendees debated the impact these approaches have on the traditional role of the librarian in higher education and the quality of service being provided to users. Ultimately, the session was aimed at encouraging discussion on a controversial topic and to provide those in attendance with multiple perspectives on the unique benefits students receive from both their peers and academic librarians.
CARLDIG-South is grateful to Brett Bodemer, Shahla Bahavar, and Lise Snyder for their time and preparation on serving on this panel, as well as to Angela Boyd for serving as moderator. We would also like to express our gratitude to the librarians and library school students in attendance and the CARLDIG-South members who helped plan the engaging discussion session.
For more information on the CARLDIG-South interest group as well as related links to material presented at this CARL 2012 Discussion Session, please visit: http://www.carl-acrl.org/ig/carldigs
Submitted by Adolfo Prieto, CSU Fullerton and Janet Pinkley, CSU Channel Islands, and Kaela Casey, CSU Channel Islands
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Summer Reading Special
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The month of March this year had me zig-zagging across four countries in northern Europe, sleeping in six distinct university towns, and visiting as many libraries as I could manage. I started the month giving a paper at a multidisciplinary conference in Trondheim in Norway, and finished the month attending an obscure book conference in Oxford. In between, I visited a handful of libraries in Sweden, Germany and England. CARL members with a fondness for old libraries or library history may find this journey of interest.
Norway
Trondheim is a provincial city on the North Sea coast of Norway, losing out only to the universities in Iceland and Tromsø (a town further up the Norwegian coast and above the Arctic Circle) for the crown of most northerly university town in the world. There was ice on the sidewalks and a frozen wind out of the North. Since the conference venue was a downtown hotel and the actual university some ways distant (and time was short), I never got a chance to visit the university library. With the name Norges Teknisk-naturvitenskapelige Universitet and thus "technical university" in its title, I was surprised to find out that the curriculum was so extensive and relatively rich in the liberal arts. The department of religion and archeology were in fact the conference organizers.
 In Oslo I expected perhaps to get a chance to visit the national library but with my limited time, it proved too far away from my downtown lodgings to visit comfortably. However, my searches for nearby libraries (thank you dear friends at Google) prompted my discovery of the highly unusual Bibliotekbaren (Library Bar). Located in one corner of a nearby upscale hotel, this dark, wood-paneled simulation of a Victorian gentleman's study, with leather overstuffed chairs and low intimate lighting, is lined with wooden bookshelves, freighted with hard-cover works of literature in Norwegian, English, German etc. An elaborate, extravagantly stocked bar at one end provides every sort of drink one could require. One may sit at a table as I did, with a half liter of Ringnes beer and peruse a volume plucked off an adjacent shelf. Books and booze: an undeniably irresistible combination. I have always been resistant to travel writers who insist on "must see" destinations for their travel-reading public, but in this case, any librarians visiting Oslo really ought to make the Bibliotekbaren one of their stops.
Göttingen
 The foundation of the university in Göttingen in the mid-18th century made a big dent in the German university scene, and the library world benefited from the long reign in succession of two remarkable librarians, Johann Matthias Gesner and Christian Gottlob Heyne. The two of them had a role in some remarkably innovative university practices and were part of a push within the university to make the professorate's intellectual output more accessible to the outside world. The faculty were not only encouraged but required to publish, and thus Göttingen was in many ways the harbinger of the modern research university. In an unprecedented move, the library produced its own journal, which served to disseminate the works of the various faculties on campus. The university's "old" library is in a charming 18th century building, and I was able to poke through its collections, noting with a start the large set of incunabula holdings (all on microfiche!). Their several-hundred-volume handwritten catalog, begun in 1720, was there for review. I marveled to touch the yellowed, aging pages and the fine, perfectly ordered handwriting in the catalog.
The main library for the university is a suitably monstrous glass and metal affair, architecturally remarkable for perching on stilts for a major portion of its footprint. It is angled, and like most German libraries I have visited, difficult to gain access to. Many academic European libraries, especially in Germany, function more as archives than as public research university libraries (the model Americans are accustomed to). If unaffiliated with the home university, one needs advance notice, letters of documentation and specific research interests to be granted entrance. In my case I was able to travel conveniently on the coat-tails of my daughter's Göttingen University ID; otherwise I would have had a much harder time seeing the library sights thanI did.
Classification is also a problematic concept in Germany. There is nothing similar to our own Library of Congress arrangement and so each library handles its own collection as it sees fit — standardized classification apparently being viewed as a frivolous novelty. As in archives, library users more or less have to know exactly what they are looking for before arriving and finding a friendly, helpful and user-oriented librarian is not always easy. Library instruction is literally a foreign practice.
Cambridge and Oxford
While the university library at Oxford, the Bodleian, is a stunning medieval stone edifice, Cambridge must make do with a large, high-towered, homely brick building, whose ever-expanding collections are rapidly crowding it into an imploded submission. Instead the most handsome and oldest libraries in Cambridge are to be found in the colleges.
Libraries at almost all the early universities of Europe got off to a slow start, despite what one might think were compelling reasons for them to be essential components of university education: the overall scarcity and high cost of texts, high concentrations of students and masters, and an overall culture of ìbookishness. Yet funds, and vision, were generally lacking. Oxford got the lead due to an infusion of books and cash in the 15th century from Duke Humphrey, the son of King Henry IV, but the upheavals of the English reformation in the early 16th century nearly dealt the university library a lethal blow, as its furniture was sold off and collections dispersed. Cambridge itself did not have the official position of university librarian until the Elizabethan statutes of 1577, as library duties before then had been handled as part of the portfolio of the university chaplain. Even then the librarian's salary, five pounds a year, proved to be annoyingly difficult to scrape up, and paled in comparison to the wages paid the high-end Regius professors, who earned a lofty forty pounds a year. At both universities, the libraries that grew up within the colleges where the students and faculty lived often represented the most relevant collections, with advantages of proximity, ease of consultation, and simpler, more nimble arrangements for the readers. Many of these college libraries remain oriented towards undergraduates, who even in present times have restricted access to the main university library.
The colleges at Cambridge and Oxford are unique institutions. Other universities have had similar structures, and of course the Oxbridge system has been widely copied, but nothing can quite compare to the originals. The early centuries of Cambridge and Oxford were characterized by intense, often violent, town-gown conflicts, and having students and masters living behind walls and gates in a semi-isolated academic fortress (the "ivory tower" archetype) proved both a reliable dampening function between the often rowdy students and the more pragmatic townsfolk, and formed what in current parlance would likely be termed a "learning community" with masters sharing dwellings with students, eating food communally and maximizing intellectual contact. With their own income and quasi-independent standing, many of the colleges grew quite powerful, and the tensions that developed between a centralized university and the colleges were often dramatic. Many of the older colleges have stunning architecture and can provide a site for a highly evocative visit.
St. John's Third Court, Old Library on the Right
One of my favorite libraries in the world is the "Old Library" at St. John's College in Cambridge. Built in 1628 to house the college's expanding collection, it occupies the top floor of the brick building that forms the north side of "Third Court". Like all previous English academic libraries, its bookshelves are perpendicular to the walls, allowing the maximum amount of light in through handsome windows. Until electric light became a reality for libraries late in the 19th century, any light other than that offered by the sun was a potential hazard, and universally prohibited, which meant that library layout was deliberately oriented towards maximum sunlight.
St. John's bookcases are ornately carved dark wood, and while it was common practice for librarians to affix shelf-lists to the ends of the cases to aid location of specific volumes, St. John's took one aesthetic step further by carefully enclosing their shelf-lists behind handsome shutters in the bookcase ends, making for an elegant look throughout.
Shelf list
My visit was on an overcast day without a great deal of light and while I poked around, the librarian and I chatted over the state of libraries in Britain. Academic libraries, particularly those at the great universities, are not as affected by the great budget upheavals in the country as the public libraries, where a good deal of controversy has arisen. Town councils (the local governmental authorities) have been forced to make mandated cuts in their operating funds, and many townships have chosen, as has been common throughout history, to preserve police, fire and other essential services intact at the expense of more "extramural" arenas such as libraries. Many small towns have closed their libraries, often to a public outraged at both the decision and its short-sightedness. As we well know in the US, justification for library services, particularly if hard data is required, is difficult. How important is a local library to the nearby schools? How much does a library help out-of-work citizens find their next position? What happens to literacy rates when a library disappears? The fate of libraries in the UK is uncertain, and the profession itself is far more endangered than it is in the US. But the calm quiet of the bookcases at St. John's, full of leather-bound volumes and the faint dusty smell of an ancient library, was a balm to my own senses.
While in Cambridge I accompanied the Cambridge Library Group (of which I was a former member) on their monthly field trip to a local collection this time the library for the department of Criminology Studies. It turns out this nondescript library, a couple of floors in the Criminology department building in the Sedgewick area of the university, is the third largest in the world, trailing in importance only the Max Planck Institute and Rutgers, of all places. Their librarian gave us an outline of the collection, an eclectic assemblage of data-heavy criminology studies along with murder mysteries, detective fiction, memoirs from incarcerated prisoners and police training manuals. Eclectic was an inadequate adjective. Browsing around the shelves after the talk, trying to make sense of the overall order of the collection, I heard another librarian mutter, "What in the world is this classification? I cannot make heads nor tails of it." Sure enough, the call numbers or "shelf-marks" were an alphanumeric sequence whose structure remained opaque, although it did not appear to be just an accession scheme. I asked one of the Criminology librarians on the way out. "Ah yes, it is Bliss," she said, referring to an obscure British-designed classification. It is a faceted system, one well geared to specialist collections that are apt to expand in unexpected directions, and I have only seen it employed in one other library: Jesus College, also in Cambridge. I am aware of three other classifications within the Cambridge university system besides Bliss, but there may be more. The main university has their own homegrown arrangement, which is cumbersome and takes some getting used to, and has grown too large — somewhat like LC — to make revamping it an appealing or even feasible option. The colleges mostly use Dewey, except notably for King's College, which perversely employs LC. And of course the archives of the university, plus the special collections in the satellite college libraries, are animals all of their own character; their usability is wholly dependent upon the local knowledge of their librarians.
Books in the Criminology Library
Oxford
I had been able to wrangle a visit to the Codrington Library at All Soul's College in Oxford and was greeted outside the college gates on a sunny spring afternoon by the building's cheerful, quick-witted, garrulous librarian. The library forms the north side of the main quadrangle at All Souls and was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor — a disciple of the famous architect Christopher Wren — and finished in 1750. In a departure from earlier college library design, it is on the ground floor and does away with the traditional stalls for the bookcases, instead being arranged more like the libraries of the Italian renaissance, with all the books on wall shelves. It is a large airy structure, with huge vaulting windows on the south side of the building that let in vast quantities of light. The soaring ceiling is impressive, with books stacked up the sides of the library to the top. The librarian answered my questions with wit and quantities of detailed stories, all the while needling her under-librarian and staff members, who returned the insults with affection. Knowing how touchy most of the college libraries are about photography, I asked if I might snap some pictures. "Of course," she said, "just be careful of our readers and don't go sticking your lens under their noses," gesturing at the dozen or so figures slumped in chairs or pondering old leather-bound books with dubious intensity. "Might wake them up," she said, eyes twinkling.
I had hoped to visit the library at St. John's (unrelated to the Cambridge college by the same name) but was unable to do so. The conference reception was a treat however, held Friday night in the Bodleian library. Richard Sharpe, the local authority on medieval libraries for the conference, had put on display four books from the Bodleian's extraordinary collection. One item caught my attention, as I had read about it from dozens of different angles but never thought I would see the real item. This was a 14th century catalog, from Dover Priory near Canterbury, and it was far and away the most advanced library catalog from the middle ages, at least in England. Most library catalogs before 1500 or so are fairly minimal affairs, at least from a modern perspective, and often were barely more than shelf-lists, with very little extra bibliographic information. The two main facets uncharacteristic of modern catalogs that were often included, were the name of the person who donated the book and the replacement cost (since that amount was required of a library user as a pledge). But the Dover catalog, compiled by its enterprising librarian John Whytecliff, went far further than a shelf-list. The shelf-list of course was the first section, an absolutely essential inventor- control device for any self-respecting medieval library. But in the second, larger section, he included far more cataloging detail: for example, listing all the works included in a particular volume (this was tricky and time-consuming, yet especially useful for a manuscript library, since several works would often be bound up in one volume.) Finally he made an entire author index, so that anyone could find all the works by a particular author, thus completing a remarkably thorough and valuable tri-partite catalog that would not be equaled in comprehensiveness for many centuries. And here it was, opened to one page, for me to gaze at in wonder. I tried not to leave drool marks on the glass case that housed it.
After the lecture and the perusal of the other items (so struck was I with the catalog that I cannot even remember what they were... gorgeous illuminated manuscripts of one sort or another), we retired to another room of the Bodleian for champagne and nibbles. The low light of the interior in the evening made for wonderful shadows in the intricately wrought carved stone ceiling and the other nooks of the library, and by the time we dispersed, we were all in a well-lubricated, library-loving mode.
I could easily have spent another week in Oxford, meandering around the other college libraries and the Bodleian's collection, but duty called back in San Francisco, and I returned — not quite to a new library, but to an entirely refurbished one, now seismically safe and handsomely appointed. My trip in March also meant I inadvertently dodged many of the headaches of the physical move from our temporary tent-dwelling to the "new" Leonard Library, but that is a different story.
Submitted by Ned Fielden, San Francisco State University
All photos in this article courtesy of Ned Fielden. More available for viewing here. |
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People News
Karin Griffin, Education Librarian, CSU Long Beach, has published the article, "Starting From Ground Zero: Establishing a Collection for a New Doctoral Program", in Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 30(4), 2012.
Pam Howard (SFSU) and Ya Wang (SFSU) have an article, "Google Scholar Usage: An Academic Library's Experience", forthcoming in the Journal of Web Librarianship, 6(2), 2012.
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Pam Howard (SFSU) and Meg Gorzycki (SFSU) are presenting at the Teaching Professor conference in Washington D.C. June 1-3. The presentation, "Moving from Reading to Literacy and Critical Thinking", adds information literacy to the conversation about the influence of reading on critical thinking.
Aline Soules presented at the Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries conference in Limerick, Ireland on May 22, 2012. Her presentation was entitled "Is It Really on the Web and What Does That Mean for Instruction and Reference?" and was based on developments from her sabbatical project.
Places News
 Sarah Faye Cohen joined Cal Poly as Associate University Librarian for Academic Services at Robert E. Kennedy Library in June. Cohen joins Cal Poly from Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, where she was Assistant Director of the Miller Information Commons at Champlain College. There she coordinated all aspects of an integrated and award–winning four–year information literacy program that embraced technology and emphasized critical thinking skills. Cohen's numerous activities in the community have included co–founding and chairing Sustain Champlain, and serving as Library Commissioner for the City of Burlington. Cohen holds an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature from Smith College, and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
After 29 years of service, Heidi Hutchinson, Special Collections Cataloger and Head, Special Materials and Languages Cataloging Unit, will be retiring from UC Riverside Libraries and from her long-time position as CARL Campus Liaison for UCR on July 1, 2012.
Lynne Reasoner will be retiring at the end of June after 20 years of outstanding service to the University of California at Riverside. Lynne has served CARL as the archivist for a number of years and was honored at the recent CARL Conference with the 2012 Outstanding CARL Member Award. Lynne initially joined the Government Publications Department at UC Riverside, where she was eventually promoted to head of the Department. In 2009, when Library Administration made the decision to close the Government Publications Reference Desk, Lynne joined the Reference Department in UCR's Rivera Library as the Government Publications Librarian. Her wisdom and expertise will be sorely missed.
Saddleback College Library is very pleased to announce the appointment of Lydia Welhan as Technical Services Librarian. Ms. Welhanís appointment is effective August 13, 2012. Lydia received her MLS from Indiana University. She also holds an M.A. in Music from the University of Maryland and B.A. in Music from the University of Idaho. She is currently the Technical Services Librarian at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin. When Lydia assumes her new position at Saddleback College in the fall, the library staff, including five full-time librarians, will be settling back in the fully-renovated library building.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Rosen, San Francisco State University
The J. Paul Leonard Library & Sutro Library was awarded 2012 Project of the Year by the Design-Build Institute of America, Western Pacific Region, at the May 24th Annual Design/Build Award Program. Read more about the J. Paul Leonard Library & Sutro Library in the September issue of the CARL newsletter!
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About the CARL Newsletter
The CARL Newsletter (ISSN: 1090-9982) is the official publication of the California Academic & Research Libraries organization and is published online quarterly. The RSS feed  for this newsletter is available at http://www.carl-acrl.org/newsletter/feed.xml.
Deadlines for submissions: February 15, May 15, August 15, and November 15.
Newsletter submissions, including creative contributions, People News and Places News should be sent to carlnewsletter@gmail.com. For corrections, questions and comments please contact the Editor, Nicole Allensworth (nallensw@sfsu.edu), J. Paul Leonard Library, San Francisco State University, 1630 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132.
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