A message from the Dean

BY JIM MULLINS

Last week, the Libraries’ annual Staff Recognition Reception was held. This wonderful gathering offers us an opportunity to celebrate our valued colleagues who retired during the year, those who reached a milestone in years of service and those who joined us in the past year. I greatly enjoy this annual event as well as our springtime gathering when several of our colleagues are recognized for their significant contributions through sustained and continued performance or who have contributed to the advancement of our strategic plan. The contributions made by our Libraries family are very impressive — please take a moment to nominate one of your colleagues, or yourself, for recognition this coming spring. Each year as nominations are reviewed, it is very impressive to see the contributions that have been made by so many of you — we all know it is not uncommon for important contributions to be quietly made every day. So, when the call for nominations is announced in January please give your thought to our colleagues in the Libraries, the Press and the Copyright Office who make our community highly professional but as importantly a vibrant, exciting and friendly place to work.

Thank you for your warm words of congratulations in response to Provost Sands’ announcement of my appointment as the Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science. Esther Ellis Norton was a 1927 Purdue graduate who served as a librarian in Cincinnati for more than thirty-five years before her retirement and relocation to West Lafayette. In the early 1980s, when the John W. Hicks Undergraduate Library was being constructed, Mrs. Norton made a significant contribution to the project. To recognize her generosity, the reference area was named for her (a plaque and a picture of her are located near the central stairway). Following her death in 1998, President Beering and the Purdue Research Foundation established the endowed professorship in her honor, with former dean, Emily Mobley as the first recipient. I am honored to have been recommended to the Purdue University Board of Trustees by a committee of named Purdue professors and the Provost, following a critical review of credentials and solicitation of letters from national and international peers. The endowment generates income that I will use to support endeavors consistent with Mrs. Norton’s wishes. Among the first will be the acquisition of new furniture and equipment to update the Esther Ellis Norton Reference Area of the John W. Hicks Library. Mrs. Norton’s gift, made nearly thirty years ago to create a state of the art reference area, will now be the state of the art Norton Information Commons.

With the fall semester now a memory, and as our attention turns to the holidays that lie ahead, my wife Kathy and I wish to extend to each and every one of you our most heartfelt wishes for a special and memorable holiday with family and friends. And, may 2012 bring you good health and happiness and be as bright, exciting and dynamic as we imagine for the Purdue Libraries community!

Happy Holidays!

I have learned a lot from my time here at Purdue Libraries and value the experiences I have had. I thank Matt Bejune for talking to me a second time as I might not have worked here at all if not for him. I have come to love my coworkers at the Hicks Undergraduate Library. I could not have asked for better people to work with and to learn from. I have learned so much from each and every one of them and these lessons will be applicable at my new job. I will miss them like crazy. I will also miss our student workers. They have been a joy to get to know and share in their college experiences. I wish them all the best in their future endeavors. I also am thankful for all the advice and professional opportunities from my librarian friends!

I have worked at Purdue for ten years and it is also my alma mater so I think it is fitting that after a decade, I find myself trying something totally new. As an Indiana native, the East Coast will certainly be an adventure! I’m looking forward to whatever life throws at me and my husband, Matt. I think Wellesley College will be a perfect fit for me and I cannot wait to get started. For those of you who don’t know, Matt will be in Pennsylvania for the next two years at college. Look for us on the red carpet in about six years. We will be the ones with all the tattoos.

If you should ever find yourself in the Boston area, look me up. I’m sure I can show you around.

Happy Holidays!

PILLAR: Infrastructure

To request a reservation for the MEL Learn Lab, Financial Conference Room, Corporate Study Room, Hicks iLab, Hicks B848, Hicks SmartBoard area, or UnderGrounds meeting space; please use the webform available at http://www.lib.purdue.edu/hsse/infopages/roomReserves.html .

The webform is set up so that your request will be received and processed in a timely manner, regardless of staffing issues or task reassignments. The form can be found on both the MEL webpage and the HSSE/Hicks webpage.

If you have any questions or problems, please contact me know at rboes@purdue.edu.

HIKS B848

PILLAR: Infrastructure

The Human Resources office has placed the newest version of Libraries Speak, a list of acronyms and terms commonly used in Purdue Libraries on the S drive in the folder Libraries Speak. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself, new staff and student employees with the most common terms.

Thank you to our many contributors throughout Libraries and to Carla Greene who patiently pulled it together. We hope you will find the document helpful.

If you have questions or corrections, please contact the HR office at green113@purdue.edu or jhillgro@purdue.edu.  

Purdue solar house replica and trophy on display in HSSE Library

PILLAR: Infrastructure

Purdue University finished second in the Solar Decathlon 2011, a solar house competition in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Nineteen teams, including four from outside the United States, designed and built affordable, energy-efficient, solar-powered homes for the competition.

Purdue’s INhome solar house earned a total of 931.390 points out of a possible 1,000. It was second only to the University of Maryland with 951.151 points.

The display will remain in HSSE through February.

Photo by Patrick Whalen

Libraries welcomes new staff in 2011

All new staff members were recognized at the Libraries Annual Staff & Recognition reception held on December 13. Front Row: Ashley Reisert, Alaina Morales, Eugenia Kim, Debbie Maron, Carla Greene, Sandy Howarth, Will Ferrall. Back Row: Robin Sipes, Clarence Maybee, Tao Zhang, David Scherer, Neal Harmeyer, Langston Bates.

New staff not pictured include Pat Irvin, April Maybee, Shannon Miller, Sammie Morris, Jennifer Theriot and Sam Wehrspann