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SULAIR NEWS – July 22, 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- SULAIR Technology Chalk Talk on SearchWorks: Thursday, July 23, 2-3PM
- Hobson Exhibition Catalogue Wins Leab Award
- James Jacobs Named to Depository Library Council
- Last Chance to Submit a SULAIR News Article until August 19
- Tales from Page Mill Road
- *** Reference Question of the Week ***
1. SULAIR Technology Chalk Talk on SearchWorks: Thursday, July 23, 2-3PM
This Thursday, the SULAIR Technology Chalk Talk will feature the extended SearchWorks team, presenting on the latest developments on SearchWorks and its new capabilities, and discussing plans for the future.
What: SearchWorks Update - SULAIR Technology Chalk Talk
When: Thursday, 7/23, 2 - 3 PM
Where: Green Library, SSRC Seminar Room
SearchWorks is SULAIR's next generation discovery environment, and provides a number of features to complement Socrates. The last few quarters have been spent moving the service to Blacklight, an open source library catalog originally developed at the University of Virginia that offers a powerful and rich platform for resource discovery. SearchWorks on Blacklight is now nearing release, and the Chalk Talk will be its first internal demonstration.
The discussion will include:
- A quick review of the SearchWorks effort to date
- A look at Blacklight's capabilities and development community
- Patron and user feedback, and use metrics that have come in so far
- A review of the current SearchWorks team & communication channels
- Plans for summer and fall releases
SearchWorks is available at:
http://searchworks.stanford.edu
If you'd like a sneak peek at the next version waiting in the wings, (note this version is under active development, and is undergoing continuous enhancements), you can see it at:
http://searchworks-test.stanford.edu
If you'd like to see the project's wiki space, you can find it in Consul at:
https://consul.stanford.edu/display/NGDE/NGDE
--submitted by Editorial Staff
2. Hobson Exhibition Catalogue Wins Leab Award
The Stanford University Libraries was one of five institutions honored for outstanding exhibition catalogues on July 12, 2009 at the ALA conference in Chicago, where Assunta Pisani was present to receive the award certificate for Experiments in Navigation: The Art of Charles Hobson.
In presenting the award, Richard Noble, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee and rare books cataloger at Brown University, noted that, "The wealth of material available in Charles Hobson's archive, recently donated to Stanford University, has been turned to every sort of advantage. One proceeds through the book with growing admiration for the skillful coordination of typography, text, captions and the disposition of the various sorts of illustrations. All elements are deployed in the service of a narrative logic, to produce a record of the origin, planning and techniques of each work. This is followed through in the impeccable quality of the image reproduction, printing and paper."
The 2008 Special Collections exhibition was curated by Glynn Edwards. Becky Fischbach designed the exhibition and catalogue.
The full press release is available at:
http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/may2009/rbmsleab_acrl.cfm
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) makes the annual selections in five categories of expense and format for the Leab Exhibition Awards. The awards, funded by an endowment established by Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current, recognize outstanding exhibition catalogues issued by American or Canadian institutions in conjunction with library exhibitions as well as electronic exhibition catalogues of outstanding merit issued within the digital/Web environment.
Congratulations to Becky for the exceptional work on this catalogue.
--submitted by Roberto Trujillo
3. James Jacobs Named to Depository Library Council
James Jacobs, Government Information Librarian in the Stanford Libraries, has been appointed to the Depository Library Council. The Council advises the Public Printer on policy matters related to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).
The FDLP provides access to the published information of the United
States Government through partnerships with more than 1,230 libraries.
Jacobs is a specialist in digital technologies and information
access in the digital world. He has also helped found several
organizations including the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, Radical Reference, and Free Government Information.
See this press release (PDF) for more details.
Congratulations, James!
4. Last Chance to Submit a SULAIR News Article until August 19
Just a reminder that the next issue of SULAIR News, Wednesday, July 29, is your last chance to submit an article until August 19. SULAIR News will reduce publication for August, with one issue during that month:
Wednesday, August 19 (Submission deadline is by Noon, Friday, August 14.)
Weekly publication of SULAIR News will resume on Wednesday, September 9. (Submission deadline is by Noon, Friday, September 4.)
--submitted by Editorial Staff
5. Tales from Page Mill Road
If you send fragile, damaged books to Book Repair, there's a good chance that Carolee Gilligan Wheeler has cared for some of them. As a Conservation Technician, she creates housing--such as phase boxes and folders--for imperiled books and documents. In short, Carolee spends many days protecting broken books.
By night, however, all bets are off. She spends her free time deconstructing books in order to re-create them as collages for mail art and inclusions in blank journals. She even teaches others to do the same in her recent class "Upcycling: The Transformation of Trash," at the San Francisco Center for the Book, and in her upcoming book, Good Mail Day: A Primer For Making Eye-Popping Postal Art (Quarry Books, September 2009).
"I enjoy telling my students about my day job," Carolee says. "As we're taking apart an old edition of bad poetry, signature by signature, there's always someone who says they feel guilty about wrecking a book. It's then that I tell them about the delicate jobs I do for the Stanford Libraries. They love to hear me talk about papyrus restoration and making housing for beautiful rare editions, because then I turn around and rip the cover off the book, to show them how it's made. I feel lucky that I've found jobs that allow me to indulge both my reverence for books and my impulse to make a big mess."
All that cutting and tearing has attracted a lot of attention from the book arts community. Recently, Carolee was asked to speak on a panel at the conference The Hybrid Book: Intersection and Intermedia. The conference, which was hosted by The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA earlier this month, focused on the way book arts is changing and evolving to incorporate new technologies. Carolee and her co-author, Jennie Hinchcliff, spoke about their mail art collaboration, Pod Post, and their process of working together on small publications, mail-related projects, and Good Mail Day.
--submitted by Mary Miller
6. *** Reference Question of the Week ***
Question: We need to convert VHS movies to DVD for use in class. I heard that
Meyer library, 2nd floor has this kind of device. We also have an old
16mm film to convert to DVD. Is that possible?
Answer: There is a self-service facility you can access on the second floor of Meyer in the Meyer computer cluster. Note that you should review copyright policies at http://fairuse.stanford.edu, before you use the facility.
You can find more reference questions and answers at the Information Center Web site.
To contribute to the Reference Question of the Week feature of SULAIR News, submit your question
and answer through the SULAIR News online submission form.
--submitted by Editorial Staff
SULAIR News is an electronic publication of Stanford University
Libraries and Academic Information Resources issued weekly. Copy deadline is
12:00 NOON Friday for publication on the following Wednesday. Submit items for
publication via the online submission system.
Editor: Eleanor Brown, Eleanor.Brown@stanford.edu
