GENERAL NEWS


Commonwealth Virtual Library
Several years ago Kentucky embarked on a process to form a Commonwealth Virtual University. Led by the SAALCK (State Assisted Academic Library Council of Kentucky) librarians, this effort came to the conclusion that a virtual university (not limited by physical space, buildings, etc.) also needed a virtual library. So discussions also began to formulate a plan to provide library databases and collections for all the citizens of the Commonwealth. Dr. William Grey Potter, University Librarian at the University of Georgia, worked carefully with the Commonwealth Virtual Library (CVL) planners and submitted his report this Spring. The CVL is moving rapidly toward its goal, and the plan is to have an operative CVL online by January 1, 1999.

The UofL Libraries have made a valuable contribution to the planning for the CVL. Hannelore Rader, Sharon Edge and Judith Niles have been involved from the beginning. David Horvath was recently appointed to serve on the Collection (Database) Group and Mary Margaret Bell serves on the Kentuckiana Collections Group. The Collections Group is currently deciding which databases should be included in this statewide resource which will be available to every citizen of the Commonwealth through public, school, professional and academic libraries. These decisions need to be made by the end of July. Many trial subscriptions are available for the databases being considered and everyone is invited to look them over and send the committee their evaluations. The passwords and usernames for the various databases are available by contacting David Horvath (dghorv01@gwise.louisville.edu, phone 852-7589).

The URL for the Commonwealth Virtual Library is http://www.nku.edu/~kycvu/vlibrary.html

It contains background for the project, the full consultants report and a lot of other useful information.

— David Horvath

Mark Your Calendars...
On September 25 at 3:00pm a celebration will be held in the Ekstrom Auditorium to commemorate the naming of the Granville A. Bunton African American Collection at the Ekstrom Library. The Board of Trustees recently approved the name recommendation. Details for the celebration are being finalized. Invitations will be sent to all University Libraries faculty and staff in addition to the university community, family, and friends of the Bunton family. This will be a very special event!

On October 9 at 4:00pm a reception will be held in the Ekstrom ground floor lobby area in honor of Dr. Charles H. Parrish, Jr., the first African American professor and the first African American department chair at the University of Louisville. Dr. Parrish, who died in 1989, was active in the Urban League, the Southern Regional Council and the National Council of Christians and Jews. He also helped to organize the Kentucky Council on Human Relations. The UofL Bicentennial Committee will place a commemorative marker on campus in his honor. This event is being sponsored by the Multicultural Center and the University Libraries.

— Rae Helton

Minerva 2000

Official Name of the new OPAC
The name for the new Voyager Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) is officially Minerva 2000. The new name was suggested by members of the OPAC committee. Why Minerva 2000? Well, Minerva has lots of name recognition on campus and everyone is already familiar with Minerva as the name of the online library catalog. 2000 was added in anticipation of the Year 2000. After the year 2000 ends we'll begin calling the online catalog Minerva (without 2000).

The difference between Endeavor and Voyager
Endeavor is the name of the company (vendor) that produces Voyager. Voyager is an integrated information management system designed primarily for academic and research libraries. It can be used for acquisitions, serials control, cataloging, collection management, circulation, preservation, binding, and an OPAC.

New Design
A new Minerva graphic is being designed by University Printing & Design. It will be used on the OPAC main screen, information literacy materials, brochures, flyers, etc. Many exciting activities are being planned for the launch of Minerva 2000. Activities will be held at each library.

If you have any questions, please contact Rae Helton (rbhelt01@gwise.louisville.edu or 852-1491.)


DEPARTMENT NEWS


Art Library
Crime Doesn't Pay
Daniel Spiegelman, who stole hundreds of rare books, manuscripts, maps and other documents from Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has been sentenced to five years in prison, according to the June 1998 issue of The Art Newspaper. Based on the market value of the items stolen, $1.3 million, the proper sentence would have been two-three years. But U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan recognized that the market value was not the only value to take into account. After testimony by a number of academics about the importance of rare books in general and the stolen items in particular, the court noted that any relationship between market value and scholarly value was purely accidental and that stealing, mutilating, and destroying rare and unique elements of our common intellectual heritage stunted the growth of intellectual knowledge. Thus, the court increased Spiegelman's sentence to five years.

Ekstrom Library

Media and Current Periodicals
Saints Preserve Us
We discovered recently that the patron saint of librarians is Jerome, so this has given us a little edge in departmental functioning. We even have a namesake of his working here! Unfortunately Saint Jerome was dead set against sex, arguing that even a man who loved his wife too much was guilty of adultery. We are considering switching to Catherine of Alexandria, a wise woman who preferred the study of philosophy to marriage and who is the patron saint of all sorts of things, including libraries, universities, and spinsters: very handy.

Team Spirit
Much of our recent staff work has been on teams and subteams: among the four of us, we are serving on a grand total of TWENTY. David leads the way on teams with four, and Trish is leading in the subteam category with six.

Vacation Plans
Both David and Wendy will be gone in early August. David is heading west for the Rocky Mountain National Park and Utah; two families and a grand total of eight teenagers will be going together, so we hope David gets plenty of rest BEFORE he leaves. Wendy is returning to her natal home of Minnesota. She plans to bring her bike along this time to enjoy the many paths in southern Wisconsin and Minnesota, to visit some communes, and to stay in a cabin in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for a week as well.

Office of Libraries Technology
The minimum hardware requirement for a staff PC to use the Voyager system is a Pentium 166 MHz with 32 MB of RAM and 17-inch monitor. Our goal is to upgrade all the staff PCs to a minimum of 200 MHz with a CD-ROM drive (but not necessarily a 17-inch monitor.) Of the 80 new PCs we purchased, 70 will replace some staff PCs with 166 MHz (those that will use the new system, especially cataloging and serials/acquisition modules). All staff PCs with 133 MHz or lower to 75 MHz will be upgraded to 200 MHz.

Office of the University Librarian
Update on Ekstrom facility projects
Several areas in the Ekstrom Library are undergoing renovation and redecorating this summer. The Library Associates generously contributed $15,000 to help defray the cost of renovating the Bingham Poetry Room. Full glass doors are planned, new carpet has been ordered and vertical blinds will replace the drapes. The gray couches have already been removed and will be replaced with groupings of wing back chairs and small tables. Forty-two stackable chairs will be refinished and re-upholstered for use with large groups.

The smoking rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors of Ekstrom Library were closed at the end of the spring semester. Students have consistently requested more group study rooms; consequently these two large rooms will be subdivided and converted to six new non-smoking group study rooms. The Ekstrom Library is now a smoke-free facility. The green barrel chairs from this area were "reallocated" to the student lounge on the main floor. Better tables and matching chairs have given the student lounge a more inviting appearance.

The Libraries Technologies Office is also slated for additional renovation. The wall between the large workroom (218) and the reception area (220) will be removed to create more open work space.

Workplace Attire Policy Reminder
As we approach the summer months please remember the importance of maintaining the strongest possible professional image in serving our users, both internal and external, particularly in our work at public service areas. Please bring this to the attention of your student workers as well. As employees of the University of Louisville, each of us represents UofL and the University Libraries every time we come to work. Let's project the best public image for the University.

Reference
The Reference Department and Information Desk would like to welcome Katina Mattingly as our newest student assistant. She has already become a critical addition to our team.

One of our own, John Breitzman, has written and will be performing in the play, Stories from the Circle, along with James Broaddus from DADS. It will be performed at the Vine Gallery on Market Street at Shelby Street, August 7 and 8, at 8:00pm. Admission is $5. Phil Sager and Anna Marie Johnson traveled to Ypsilanti, Michigan, June 4-6 to present at and attend the LOEX Library Instruction Conference. Their presentation (“So Many Students, So Little Time: The Impact of a Self-Paced, Multimedia Tutorial on Library Instruction”) went well and they learned many helpful tips and ideas from other librarians involved in instruction. It was interesting to listen to our own Hannelore Rader describe the evolution of library instruction from the 1970's to now, and the four-day old (yes that was days!) Eastern Michigan Library was a wonder. Most of the circulating collection is stored in big metal bins in a huge vault and an automated retrieval robot pulls the particular bin when a book is requested. Wild! So despite the chilly weather and the five-hour flight delay, they had a good trip!

Teresa Bowden and her mother took a relaxing road trip around Missouri and Tennessee in late May. They visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder home and museum in Mansfield, Missouri, which was very interesting, even though the tour guide was unimpressive. They also made the mandatory visit to Graceland during their stop in Memphis, and were surprised at the rundown areas surrounding the grounds. Of course the grounds themselves are beautiful, and although neither shares similar tastes to Elvis, they found the interior of the home impressive. After riding on many (according to the atlas) "primary" roads through Missouri and Arkansas, they decided they didn't want to see what secondary roads were like.

Glenda Neely and her family vacationed at Amelia Island, Florida in early June. They enjoyed the town of Fernandina Beach on Amelia, took a sailboat ride (along with 25 others) and rode (walked) horses along the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia is on the East Coast just below the Georgia state line. Their trip to St. Augustine was canceled due to fires in Florida.

Special Collections
Student assistant Robin Wallace received a scholarship from the Fine Arts Department that allowed her to travel with a group from the Louisville Visual Art Association and the University of Louisville to California. The group stayed four days in Los Angeles and toured the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Santa Fe Artists' Colony. The focus of the trip was the tour of the Getty. They were allowed in the museum before regular opening hours for a tour. Later in the afternoon the group split: half took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Conservation Institute and the other half toured the gardens. The highlight of the tour for Robin was an exhibit of daguerreotypes from the Getty collection. She also took a night-time tour of L.A., but unfortunately didn't see any celebrities! Robin will be contributing an article about the trip to the Getty to the next issue of Parnassus, the journal of the graduate department of fine arts.

Every summer during the second week of June there is a special camp in Kentucky for children ages 7-17. Indian Summer is a volunteer based camp for children who have or have had cancer. Deirdre Scaggs spent a week at Indian Summer photographing the children for PowerCreative who will use the photographs to make a yearbook/journal of very special children who are truly inspiring and full of life.

International Visual Sociology Association 1998 Annual Conference
The 1998 annual conference of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA) was held in Louisville Wednesday, June 24 through Sunday, June 28. Most of the presentations took place in the Ekstrom Library Auditorium. Conferees were academics from around the world. The conference was hosted by the UofL Sociology Department. The collections of documentary photographs housed at the Photographic Archives were a prime factor in bringing the conference to Louisville. Bill Carner and Andy Anderson made presentations based on the Photographic Archives' Standard Oil Collection. An exhibition in the Photo Archives gallery features photographs by Russell Lee from this collection.

Stacks Maintenance
Special thanks to Ben King, Carol Webb, and Ruth Holman for looking after the stacks operation while Don went on vacation. Don, who has a habit of getting his mug on national TV at sporting events was in Chicago watching the Cubs.

Shifting activities are in full swing thanks to stacks student assistants and our gracious volunteers. We hope to have all the shelves moved by the beginning of the fall term.

Kersey Library
Conferences
June 8-9 Mark Paul attended the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Conference in Indianapolis. Mark said it was very informative. He learned about Collection Management changes that the International Information Services for the Physics and Engineering Communities (INSPEC) will be implementing this fall. He also had a chance to visit with some of his friends from graduate school and see one of his mentoring instructors, Professor Linda Smith, as well as talk to people from UK.

Carol Brinkman attended the American Library Association Conference inWashington D.C.

Recognitions
Kersey Library is proud to announce that four of our student assistants Ming Ni, Wanna Prechatavanit, Jay Smith and Phoni Vurakarnam, are being presented with Kersey’s “Certificate of Achievement.” (Recently Kersey began to award these in-house certificates to outstanding students at the end of each semester.) These four students showed superior quality work in all aspects of their responsibilities. Ming Ni and Jay Smith handle the interlibrary loans and take great care to fill the requests as accurately as possible. They also do First Search for the requests from our library. Wanna Prechatavanit works for our binding department with supervisor Steve Whiteside and is working on a special linking project. He is always there to assist patrons or co-workers even when he is not scheduled to work. Phoni Vurakarnam works for our acquisitions department with supervisor Michael Weinert. Phoni, a very quiet and hardworking student, is always there to assist above and beyond his own duties. Kersey Library is very proud to have such outstanding students.

Birthdays
Marcia Kotlinski and Michael Weinert celebrate their birthdays in July and Ming Ni celebrates her birthday in August. Kersey Library extends best wishes to those of you with birthdays in July and August ... have fun and be happy on those very special days!

Kornhauser Library
Kornhauser would like to welcome our newest reference librarian, Catherine Graber. In addition to normal reference duties, Catherine will also be serving as Coordinator of Marketing for Kornhauser.

Gary, Nancy, Michel, and Karen spent Memorial Day weekend in Philadelphia for the Medical Library Association's Convention and Centennial Anniversary.

Judy Wulff recently went to Indianapolis for the Special Library Association Annual Conference.

The courtyard in front of Kornhauser is receiving a concrete-lift. Large holes for electrical equipment are being dug on the east side of the building. Kornhauser's elevator is being renovated for ADA compliance and will be out of commission until late July or early August. Interlibrary Loan student Will Olmstadt has been accepted into UK's MLS program.

Michel's son Matt was accepted into the Political Science Ph.D. program at Columbia University.

Law Library
Missy Long Shuter spent her summer vacation in style. She drove down to a family get-together at Hilton Head, South Carolina in a convertible. Once there, she stayed in a 5-bedroom and 7-bathroom house that had its own pool, Jacuzzi, and a lagoon with an alligator in it. Needless to say, she had a great time.

Rosalyn Mills has been taking advantage of the Staff Development and Wellness seminars. In June she attended "The New Work: Doing More Without More Time," which was about the changing workplace and how secretaries everywhere are taking on more managerial responsibilities. This seminar is offered to all UofL employees once or twice every year, and Rosalyn recommends it to all library support staff.

Music Library
Steve Noble published "Hitting the Books: Accessible Textbooks for K-12 Math and Science Education" in the June 1998 issue of Information Technology and Disabilities.

The Music Library Association's annual meeting in the year 2000 will be held in Louisville. Planning for this exciting opportunity to showcase our city began Friday, June 12, at a meeting of the newly-formed Local Arrangements Committee. Tyler Goldberg, Neal Nixon, Meredith Dooley and co-chair Karen Little attended from UofL Paula Hickner, of the University of Kentucky, serves as the other co-chair. Other librarians at the meeting were Marty Rosen from IU-Southeast; Ralph Papakhian from IU-Bloomington; and Dick Griscom, now at the University of Illinois. The committee met at The Hyatt, and members happily report that the rotating restaurant on top of the hotel spins just slowly enough.

University Archives and Records Center
Tom Owen has returned to the University Archives. He was on personal leave for the first five months of 1998 to spend all of his time running for Mayor of Louisville in the Democratic party primary. We're sorry Tom narrowly lost the race (52% to 48%), but we're happy to have him back.

Margaret Merrick and her husband Robbie vacationed in southern Utah in May, exploring the territory and visiting a number of national parks. They toured Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, and Arches National Parks and also explored national monuments such as Hovenweep, Mount Timpanogas Cave, and Natural Bridges. Side trips included Valley of the Gods, Gooseneck Point and Monument Valley. The weather was perfect and the cacti and wildflowers were in bloom. Margaret especially enjoyed hiking canyon territory, visiting Anazasi ruins and hunting for petroglyph sites. Robbie particularly enjoyed tackling the Burr and Shafer Trails, dirt and gravel roads that twisted up and down the canyonlands for some very exciting driving challenges. All in all they both felt they had experienced writer Edward Abbey's benediction "May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view."

Kathie and Ron Johnson were thrilled to have their last child graduate from Atherton High School on May 27. Cassidy will be attending JCC next year, then going to the College of Charleston in Fall 1999. So, there is at least another year before the empty nest!

Kathie Johnson is the new co-chair (with Karen McDaniel of KSU) of the Women's History Coalition of Kentucky. Traditionally the Coalition puts on a yearly conference, but it was decided at a June 16 planning retreat to survey women historians and women's organizations around the state to see if there are other needs in the area of Kentucky women's history that are not currently being met. Using the results of the survey, the Coalition will plan future activities.