USAIN 2010 - Good Times were had by All

BY MARIANNE STOWELL BRACKE

After over 2 years of planning, the 11th Biennial USAIN Conference is now history! More than 120 librarians, information specialists, students, professors, and vendors attended the conference that ran from May 9 - 13. The keynote speaker, Purdue’s Dr. Kevin McNamara of Ag Economics, addressed the conference theme of Agriculture without Borders by describing his efforts in rebuilding the higher education system in Afghanistan after devastation from 30 years of war. All of the speakers were amazing, but some of the highlights included Jim De Vries from Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org), an organization that helps fight hunger nationally and internationally by helping needy individuals become self-sufficient, and Matthew Jose, an urban farmer from Indianapolis that is turning unused land in the city into gardens – an effort that spurs the feeling of community and is a good and active use of the land.

There were two tours offered. One was to Fair Oaks Farm, where people saw the birth of a calf, watched a milking carousel, and enjoyed lots of dairy products. Later in the week, people toured Inspired Fire Glass Blowing Studio and received a demonstration of glass blowing. Owner Sharon Owens even made a glass cow just for the conference. Conference attendees also enriched the local economy, making visits (sometimes multiple!) to River Knits Yarn Shop, Von’s, Nine Irish Brothers, Harry’s Chocolate Shop and other local favorites.

Many, many thanks to all the people that made the conference a success: Dean Jim Mullins and administration for financial support of the conference and for allowing staff members to attend; Amy Van Epps for her speedy and thorough wrangling of the Web site; Linda Foster for her maintenance of Tippy’s Travels Facebook page and assistance in planning the tours; Stephanie Schmitz for giving a tour of the Amelia Earhart exhibit; Sarah Kelly for her donation of locally made products for the raffle; Amanda Gill for knitting a sweater for Tippy to give to the next USAIN hosts; Vicki Killion, Maribeth Slebodnik, Mary Dugan, and Gretchen Stephens for their help in local arrangements; and to the staff of the Health and Life Sciences division for holding down the fort while others were attending the conference.

Tippy is semi-retired now. And though she would like to settle down in a nice meadow, she may still travel from time to time – especially to visit her cousin Minnie at the University of Minnesota, hosts of the next USAIN Conference 2012.

Photo and sweater by Amanda Gill.

We have received permission from the Provost to initiate a search for a new Head of Archives and Special Collections and University Archivist. A position announcement is currently being drafted and a search committee has been formed. Search committee members are Donna Ferullo, chair; Tomalee Doan, Mark Newton, Mary Sego, Judy Schumaker, and Elizabeth Wilkinson. Julie Hillgrove and Beth McNeil are ex officio members. The search is expected to last into the fall.

While the search is underway, Elizabeth Wilkinson will serve as the main contact for Archives and Special Collections. Please contact Elizabeth with any questions which would have previously gone to Sammie Morris.

The two A/P archivist openings advertised late this spring have been filled. As of July 1, 2010, Elizabeth Wilkinson will serve as Processing & Public Services Archivist, with responsibility for the general management and oversight of reference and processing services, including supervision of processing and reference support staff and students. Stephanie Schmitz will serve as Special Projects Archivist, and has responsibility for the general management and oversight of two major collecting initiatives, the Women's Archives and the Psychoactive Substances Research Collection. These positions are funded entirely by Archives and Special Collections-related gift and/or endowment funds.

Reminder: During the summer months, ASC has reduced hours — Monday through Friday, 1- 4:30 p.m. Signs have been posted on the HSSE library entrance doors and in the elevators. The current exhibit, “Science and Psychoactive Substances: Unlocking the Doors of Perception,” will be on display through August 13. The 2010 exhibit calendar is available at http://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol/?page=exhibits.

Research Council sponsored “Research, Coffee and Conversation” for Libraries’ people involved in research and scholarship to get together to engage in collegial conversation about scholarly work and related topics. The goal is to enhance our research community, nurture collegiality, and explore collaboration in an informal setting (as opposed to the Celebrating Research forum held in the fall).

The inaugural meeting was on June 19 in HIKS B-848, a venue most people agreed was a good venue for having small conversations. We talked about research and strategic pillars, and the need for flexibility in support for research and scholarship. Next time we will focus more on interests and ongoing projects, so that we can talk about “cross-pollination” of groups and possible collaborations. We will try a different format, perhaps breaking up into small groups by interest area (e.g., e-Science, information literacy, user studies, etc.) and/or possibly by approach/methodology (case studies, survey, etc.).

The next Research Conversation & Coffee (or tea) will be Tuesday, July 13, 2010 from 3:30-4:30 pm in HIKS B-848. Coffee/tea/cookies will provided and it is hoped that people will bring ideas and updates about research and scholarship interests, ongoing projects, possible collaborations, etc.

The HathiTrust is a single repository where holdings of digitized items from CIC libraries, the libraries of the University of California system, and other major research libraries are now available. Late spring marked a major milestone for the HathiTrust – over 1,000,000 volumes in the public domain have been digitized.

Current HathiTrust statistics include:

• 6,164,163 total volumes
• 3,612,749 book titles
• 146,111 serial titles
• 2,157,457,050 pages
• 229 terabytes
• 73 miles
• 5,008 tons
• 1,176,680 volumes (~ 19% of total) in the public domain

--from http://www.hathitrust.org

At Purdue we are working on processes for loading HathiTrust records into VUFind, the new catalog interface being developed. This will allow Purdue students, faculty, and others to easily locate full-text digitized books in the HathiTrust when they are searching our resources. Timeline for implementation is by fall semester.

A HathiTrust research project underway here at Purdue has the potential to greatly impact other libraries. Paul Bracke and Dean Lingley are working to develop programming to filter the Hathi record set to include only certain types of records and then match those filtered records with local catalog. If this project is successful, we may be able to develop workflows for using Hathi records to support collection disposition (i.e., weeding) decisions. The basic idea is that we might be able to weed items from our collection where there is a trusted print copy AND the item is available to local users via Hathi. Throughout the CIC our colleagues are very interested in ongoing conversations about both shared print and digital repository guidelines. This project may help facilitate the CIC conversations and should provide us with ideas about how we might be able to leverage Hathi in making collection management decisions.

The Google book digitization project continues at CIC libraries and will likely not come to Purdue for at least three or four more years. At that point, any Purdue books which are digitized as part of the Google project will be added to the HathiTrust.

Purdue Libraries professor headed to Egypt as Fulbright Scholar

Michael Witt, assistant professor of library science and interdisciplinary research librarian at Purdue University, has been named a Fulbright Scholar.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is the U.S. government's flagship academic exchange effort. It is administered by the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars for the U.S. Department of State.

The award will support Witt in relocating his family to Alexandria, Egypt, where he will lecture and conduct research at the Bibliotheca Alexandria from January to May 2011. The city once housed the Library of Alexandria, which was founded in the third century B.C., and is widely recognized as the first and greatest library of its kind in ancient times.

The Arab Republic of Egypt began construction of the modern Bibliotheca Alexandria in 1995. The library has capacity to hold 8 million books and houses three museums, four art galleries, a planetarium, conference center and other specialized facilities.

Witt's lecturing and research will benefit Egyptian librarians who are managing electronic resource collections and help them assess technologies to improve access, such as link resolvers, federated search engines and resource selection tools. His research focuses on new roles for librarians in curating non-traditional digital information such as datasets and applying library science principles to e-science. He also has been invited to speak at Alexandria University, the October (City) University for Modern Sciences and Arts, and the Microsoft Innovation Laboratory in Cairo.

Witt said his Egyptian students at Purdue inspired him to apply for the award. His family invites international graduate research assistants from his lab to Thanksgiving dinner at their home every year. During Ramadan last year, one of the students returned the invitation to Witt to join his family for Iftar, an evening feast, and it piqued his interest.

Writer: Jim Bush, 765-494-2077, jsbush@purdue.edu

Michael Fosmire has received provost approval for a sabbatical from July 1 to December 31. During his sabbatical, Michael will focus on writing the Sudden Selector Guide to Physics for ALA’s ALCTS Division. This guide will focus on the liaison role for physics librarians, and will provided a much needed addition to the professional development literature for academic librarians. Michael also plans to follow-up on and complete some journal articles during his time away. 

While Michael is on sabbatical, Division Head responsibilities will be divided among Jeremy Garritano, Amy Van Epps, and Beth McNeil. Jeremy will be the administrative head of the physical science libraries (Physics, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Chemistry, and Mathematical Sciences) and Amy will be administrative head of the Engineering and Aviation Technology Libraries. Jeremy and Amy will represent the PSET Division at the Division Heads and the Planning and Operations Council meetings, respectively. Since the strategic initiatives of the Division have already been determined and planned prior to the sabbatical and goals set for individual members of the Division, Jeremy and Amy will be responsible for keeping the progress of the Division on track during the time of this sabbatical.      

Carolyn Laffoon, who is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the EAS and Physics Libraries, will temporarily also assume responsibility for the liaison roles related to Physics.

During Michael’s sabbatical, PSET librarians will report to me and I will also chair the monthly PSET Division meetings, in consultation with Amy and Jeremy.

Well, the good news is that I made it through the first five weeks at Purdue without killing students darting in front of my car while they were texting and walking, totally oblivious to my blue Hyundai screeching to a halt just inches away! “C ME?” I’d text to them—if only it would help! I am impressed that the automobile accident rate at Purdue isn’t as high as an active war zone.

I once saw Lewis Carroll’s journal in which he had written, by hand, Alice through the Looking Glass at the British Museum in London. Writing was a labor of love. He had drawn a sweet little picture of Alice in the margins wearing a checkered dress and white pinafore. There were few words crossed out and only a couple of arrows. I can’t imagine starting at the beginning of a document and writing it through to the end without the ability to plop text into a different page, rewrite a sentence a dozen times to fix split infinities and passive voice, or delete an irrelevant paragraph. 

Writing long ago took dedication, patience, forethought—and NEAT hand writing. 

Once word processors and spell check were invented, my enjoyment of writing greatly increased, especially since no one could see my embarrassing handwriting. That said, I asked the Dean if I could write a column for Inside. This is a good format for me to communicate informally with you and an opportunity for us to become acquainted. It would be nice to have you along with me as I make the journey into Purdue culture. 

I’m excited to explore topics that are interesting (or just amusing) to me, and I’d love to have your suggestions for topics as well. There are many University and Libraries topics to explore. Maybe what I write will be funny. Maybe it will be inspiring or educational. Hopefully, it will at least be interesting. Send me your ideas, questions, or comments at jhillgro@purdue.edu.

I’m not sure on which side of the Looking Glass Purdue is found. I have definitely seen more than one giant white rabbit darting about, pocket watch in hand, singing, “I’m late. I’m late.” I also saw a Cheshire cat at the Union drinking malt at Pappy’s and rocking out to Elvis.

Makes you wonder.

Keep your eyes open for a Mad Hatter!  He’s got to be here somewhere!

Library Divisions Celebrate a Successful Year and Each Other

HSSEB has been working together increasingly as a division, taking hours at each other’s service desks, sending over staff members to fill in for a shortage, sharing our grad students and student assistants and coordinating our collections. What better way, though, to build relationships than to get together for some terrific food and conversation in a lush, green setting?

Roger Strater and Dan Yeoman oversaw the grilling portion of the event as if they were in competition for Top Chef, commandeering the best shelter in Happy Hollow Park. No charcoal lighter fluid for these guys—they used metal chimneys, resulting in a perfectly even fire and burgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers without the chemical taste. Linda Rose had the demanding task of emailing the invitation. A tantalizing spread evenly dispersed amongst the courses, from crisp, home grown lettuce to made-from-scratch brownies with cream cheese filling. Everyone seemed to enjoy talking with people they don’t see every day and even the fickle Indiana weather complied with sunshine and warmth.

PSET members also enjoyed their annual “Off Campus, End of the Year” luncheon held at Puccini’s hosted by Michael Fosmire.This is the third year for this event when PSET staff get together to celebrate another GREAT year of accomplishments! 

Staff members were served a variety of calzones, salads, and drinks.

The PSET Morale Team, Angie Ewing, Sandy Galloway, and Linda Underhill, arranged the luncheon, as well as many other entertaining activities throughout the year.