|
|
GSLIS newsletter
The University of Rhode Island
Graduate School of Library and
Information Studies
|
Edited
by Gale Eaton and Zachary Berger
Fall 2005
Letter from the Director
I usually use this space in the
newsletter to highlight some of the recent accomplishments of GSLIS and its
students, faculty, and alumni. In other words, I write about news. Isn’t that
what I should be doing in a newsletter? We have much to be proud of: faculty
and alumni serving society through professional associations and publications,
new alumni jobs, scholarships to students, new courses and certificates, a
$504,775 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and many
other accomplishments that are reported elsewhere in this Newsletter.
However, in this message, I would
like to reflect on who we are and what we stand for as a School. In some of
our recruiting materials, we highlight the School’s commitment to diversity,
intellectual freedom, and information literacy. To quote one flyer, GSLIS
strives “to prepare knowledgeable and ethical professionals to serve the
information needs of a diverse society. Student-centered and service-oriented,
we work to maintain a community of active and diverse learners and to encourage
the formation of professional networks.” These are big goals and we need the
help of our all GSLIS community to continue to achieve them.
Each year, the faculty, in consultation
with our Advisory Committee and others, review and revise documents that guide
all of our activities. We have Educational Outcomes for our students and a
Mission, Goals, and Objectives for the School. We have a Vision Statement
and a statement of our Core Values. All of these documents are on the GSLIS
website (http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/web/About/about.htm).
I think it would be wonderful if
all of our alumni visited our website, read those documents, and let the
faculty know what they think of them. Are we on target? Does the School need
to adjust any of its goals, outcomes, or values? What can we do to make our
programs even better, to strengthen the support we give our students and
alumni, to increase our service to the library profession and to society?
Please give me and the rest of
the faculty feedback. Share your ideas, and let us know what you would like to
do to help. I believe that we have a wonderful MLIS program; but with your
help, we can make it even better. I look forward to continuing to work with
all of you to achieve our goals.
Warm regards to all,
W. Michael Havener
Professor and Director
Prism Plus Fellowships
A $504,775 grant
from the Institute of Library and Museum Services
is making it possible for the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of
Library and Information Studies to offer twelve fellowships to prepare librarians
to work with diverse populations, providing culturally sensitive information
literacy instruction that empowers individuals to access and use information
effectively. Students selected to be Prism plus Scholars will receive
support to allow them to complete an American Library Association-accredited
MLIS degree between January 2006 and May 2008. Students may be
either full-time students, completing the degree in five consecutive semesters
by August 2007; or part-time students, completing the degree over seven semesters
by May 2008.
In addition to
tuition, fees, and stipends, the Prism Plus Scholars will receive experience
in providing information literacy instruction and performing outcomes-based
evaluation; strong public service experience in an academic or public library
setting; and subsidies to attend American Library
Association (ALA) Annual Conferences and the 2006
Joint Conference of Librarians of Color. Prism Plus Scholars will begin
their studies in the Spring 2006 semester, but additional Scholars may be
admitted in Summer 2006 if all fellowships are not filled in the Spring.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, and applicants will be
required to interview in person or by phone. First consideration will be given
to applications received prior to October 15, 2005. Both U.S. citizens and
permanent residents of the U.S. are eligible to apply for these fellowships.
Thanks to our supporters
The generous support of alumni, friends, and library practitioners
has continued to enrich our work this year. We greatly appreciate all who
have served on our Advisory Committee, made guest presentations in our classes,
and assisted us with our Annual Phonathon. Many thanks to the approximately
520 alumni, students, and friends who donated to the GSLIS Graduate Fund last
year.
Adjunct professor
Melody Allen has been elected to the
2007 Sibert Committee. The Association
for Library Service to Children (ALSC) awards the Robert
F. Sibert Informational Book Medal each year to “the author of the most
distinguished informational book published in English during the preceding
year.”
Adjunct professor
Betsey Brenneman was nominated for
the Teaching Excellence Award at Worcester
State College.
Adjunct
professor Joanna Burkhardt is on
sabbatical this fall, working on assessment of learning outcomes for LIB 120
Introduction to Information Literacy.
Adjunct professor
Elliott Caldwell has been asked to
create an administrative structure for the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of the American Indian Archives, part of the Libraries, Archives &
Special Collections division (http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/siasc/).
Dr. Gale
Eaton received an Outstanding Graduate
Studies 2005 award.
Dr. Donna
L. Gilton's summer was busy and productive,
with research, writing, and service. Some of her efforts are bearing visible
fruit this fall. Her article, "Facing the Music and Keeping It Fresh,
Rooted, and Real," will be published in the next issue of the A.M.E.
Church Review. She also worked with Dr. W. Michael Havener, Ida McGhee, and Denise Dowdell to establish Cornucopia:
Rhode Island Librarians of Color (RILOC). The first official meeting of
this group occurred on September 30, 2005. The next meeting is scheduled for
10:00 A.M. on February 4, 2006 at the East
Providence Public Library - Weaver Branch.
Director W. Michael Havener taught three new one-credit special topics courses this semester: Professional
Associations in Library and Information Services; RI Library Landscapes: Academic
Libraries; and RI Library Landscapes: Public Libraries.
In July 2005,
Dr. Yan Ma was invited to write the
preface to the book of The Era of Picture: The Theoretical
Analysis of Visual Culture Communication,
which will be published by Fudan University Press, Shanghai, China in 2005.
We are
grateful for news of Katrina survivors Patricia Del Nero (1989), Andrew Corrigan (1989), and Miao Jin (2001; see below), and hope that all our other
flooded graduates – whether in Louisiana, Mississippi, or New England – are
finding warmth and comfort.
Janet Austin
(1998) still works part time as a reference librarian at the Cranston Public
Library. She is on the Board of Directors of the American
Tapestry Alliance, serves as Coordinator of Tapestry Weavers in New England,
and is renovating an 80-year-old house in Cowesett.
Sharon
Babbitt (2002) has been appointed school
library media specialist at the Academy of the Palm Beaches (FL), an
independent day school for grades PreK-Grade 8.
Toni Buzzeo
(1990) says her book, Toni Buzzeo and You (part of a new Libraries
Unlimited series introducing authors to lesson-planning teachers and librarians),
will debut at the October AASL
conference.
Alexander
Caracuzzo (1993) is the new Associate
Head of the Dewey Library at
MIT.
Catherine
L. Crohan (1986) co-presented the poster
session Information Literacy Faculty Development Grants: The Siena College
Experience at the 12th national conference of the Association
of College & Research Libraries held in Minneapolis in April 2005.
She is Coordinator of Library Instruction at Siena College, Loudonville, New
York.
Patricia
Del Nero (1989), Andrew Corrigan (1989), and their two daughters evacuated New Orleans,
where Andy works at the Tulane library (about nine feet of water) and Trish at
Loyola of New Orleans (no library damage, so far as Trish knows). They took
refuge at Andy’s parents’ house in College Station, Texas, and looked at aerial
pictures of their house on Google. The house didn’t flood, but a falling oak
tree took out the back wall and much of the roof. Worst loss: their cat. Best
gift: fabulous coffee from Paula Anderson (1998).
Jan Dempsey
(2001) is now the director of South Hamilton’s Hamilton-Wenham
Public Library, the only regional library in Massachusetts.
Paula (Rinaldi)
DiBiase (2002) is the new director of
the Hope Library in Scituate,
succeeding Holly Albanese (2001), who had a baby girl and relocated with her
family to Florida in 2004; Donna O’Connor (1994) has succeeded Paula as Youth Services/Children's Librarian.
“GSLIS prepared
me well!” writes Holly Hendricks (2005).
She did a PFE at the Massachusetts
Historical Society, and they hired her to digitize and design interfaces for
a 45-volume documentary edition of the Adams and Winthrop Papers, drawing
upon both her library and computer science skills. She recently toured other
historic digitization projects at the University of Virginia Press, the George
Washington Papers (at the UVA library), the etext center, the developer of the
Dolley Madison Digital Edition, and the Jefferson Retirement Series at Monticello,
and found that what the librarians there had to teach her built directly on
her GSLIS courses – especially the core.
Eugene J.
Jeffers (2005) has been named Community
Resources Librarian at the Pawtucket
Public Library, where he was previously a Library Associate in the Children's
Department. He will be working with the community in a number of ways, including
outreach and programming, reports Pawtucket PL Teen Librarian Robin
Lensing (2002).
Miao Jin (2001), a librarian at Southern Mississippi
University, weathered Hurricane Katrina. The roof stayed on her apartment
(although not the one next door), the insurance will take care of her car
damage, the electricity came back, her neighbors shared food and water, and the
university escaped the worst of the storm.
Kathryn Kulpa
(1993, TCP 2003) is the author of an award-winning short story collection,
Pleasant Drugs, released in August: http://www.midlist.org/showauthor.cfm?authnum=40.
Intended as adult fiction, it has also been enthusiastically reviewed for
young adults. She recently started a new position in reference at UMass Dartmouth,
and has joined the URI English department as a per-course literature instructor.
“So, when people noting the title of my book ask what my favorite ‘drug’ is,”
she writes, “you can guess why I just say: COFFEE!”
In February,
2004, Patrick Lavey (1998), formerly
project cataloger for the New York Historical
Society’s Mellon Project and the New York State Newspaper Project, took
a position as cataloger in Boston’s 200-year-old Social
Law Library.
Sally Leahey
(2001), Young Adult Librarian at the Biddeford (ME) McArthur
Library, and Robin Lensing (2002), Teen Librarian at the Pawtucket (RI) Public
Library, presented "Tried and True: Teen Crafts Demo" at the
New England Library Association conference
on October 18. Their co-presenter, Casey Rondini, is a fellow member of the
board of the New England Round Table
of Children's Librarians. Robin and Casey also presented "Beyond
Book Reviews: Nontraditional Material Selection Sources" the same day.
Corinna
Alves MacDonald (2002) has volunteered:
she is the new editor of the RILA
Bulletin. Send your mail to corrinajean@yahoo.com
and visit
http://www.uri.edu/library/rila/bulletin/current/79.1.pdf
to download a recent bulletin.
Stan McDonald
(1966) retired as Library Director of Framingham State College in 1996, the
same year he received the GSLIS Distinguished Alumnus Award. His Blue Horizon
Jazz Band continues to flourish (see http://www.bluehorizonjazzband.com/),
and he was the subject of the feature article in the February 2003 issue of
The Mississippi Rag.
Molly Mahony
(1983) has spent all but one of the years since graduation in Ann Arbor, where
she and husband Paul Smith (URI 1971) have raised three children. She has
had numerous temporary positions at the University of Michigan libraries,
but in August 2001 she landed a permanent part-time position in the UM department
of philosophy’s Tanner
Philosophy Library.
Mary Moulton (1992) started at Air Products
and Chemicals six years ago as head of library reference services, but for
the past two years, she has worked as a taxonomy specialist in their IT division. “I
am the primary architect and project team leader for our internal knowledge
organization system which includes search, taxonomy, and content management,”
she writes. She was interviewed in the October 2004 Searcher Magazine for an article,
“Multi-Faceted Search.” In May 2005, she presented a case study, “Search and
Your Content Management System,” at the Enterprise Search Summit in New York
City. She has recently been named to Nazareth
Memorial Library’s Board of Directors.
Andre Nault
(2005) has accepted a position at the University of MN as the head of their
veterinary medical library. “This
promises to be a great position for me, and I hope to remain there until I
retire!” he says.
Judith Porter
(1988) retired about two years ago and now has time to write. Her novel, Coco
Twain Tells the Truth, is due to be released by PublishAmerica
in August, 2005 (ISBN: 1-4137-6962-4). For more information, see
http://www.jaykay100.com/
Charles
G. Schiller (2001) has a one-year contract
with the Donahue Institute (http://www.donahue.umassp.edu/)
to direct the Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative (CITI) K-12 project
through June 30, 2006. The CITI concept has been successful in the state college
system, and Charlie brings both IT expertise and a K-12 perspective to the
task of implementing it in the public schools through grants, networking,
collaboration, and support (http://www.citi.mass.edu/k-12/grants.html).
James R.
Skypeck (2000), public services librarian
at the BU School of Theology Library,
was recently elected to the steering committee of the Public Services Interest
Group of the American Theological
Library Association. He is scheduled, along with two colleagues, to present
a workshop on critical thinking and evaluating information in academic research
at the June 2006 ATLA conference in Chicago.
Lauri
Stevenson (1999) recently presented at the
Attorney Information Exchange Group (AIEG) Conference in Washington, DC, on
researching patents, both foreign and domestic. All part of her duties as a
senior research associate at Safety Research & Strategies in Rehoboth, MA.
Lynne Tobin (1987)
was in federal service from graduation until her August 31 retirement. She
started at the Naval War College, then moved to the GAO, and finally to the
CIA, where she was most recently the Head of the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency) Washington Research Center, a collection of map, photo, and reference
libraries. “I took leave without pay various years to accompany my Navy
husband, and enjoyed working as a reference librarian at the University of
West Florida on one of those tours,” she says. “One never retires from
being a librarian, however, so I anticipate volunteer or part time opportunities.”
Emily V.
Troiano (2002) is currently the Senior Librarian
at Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit resource and advisory organization that
works with women and diversity in business. She has been at the organization
for two years and lives in Brooklyn.
Mary Van Ullen (1994) is
coauthor of “Citation Generators: Generating Bibliographies for the Next Generation,” in
the July 2005 issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship.
Maria
Weeks (2005) has returned to the Saratoga
(NY) area where she and her husband grew up, and is now School Library Media
Specialist at Schuylerville Elementary School.
Janice Wilbur
(1987) is scheduled to follow Joanne Lamothe (2000)
as president of the New England Library Association.
As she gets ready to take the helm, she says, “It’s a huge ship . . . that
I am proud to keep afloat! All year I’ve been doing the tasks of the
VP/Conference Chair. It’s in Worcester this year and that has made prep
a bit easier. . . . My education at URI prepared me well.”
Emily C.
Wild (2000) was just hired as a part-time
reference librarian at Providence College. She is still a hydrologist with
the MA-RI Water Science Center of
the U.S. Geological Survey, wrapping up work she started in 1999.