Simmons College GSLIS News

April 30, 2008: InfoLink Focuses on Alumni

The April issue of the Simmons GSLIS InfoLink is now available. With a lead story on GSLIS Alumna Sarah Thomas (the first American and first woman to be chosen as the Bodleian Librarian at Oxford University), and a snapshot profile of Alumni Association President Margaret

Cardello, this issues honors Simmons GSLIS alumni. There is also a feature on "GSLIScast," the GSLIS Podcasting project, as well as congratulations to recent award winners. Read all these stories and more by downloading the PDF; an online supplement, with additional content, is also available.

April 30, 2008: Associate Professor Robin Peek to co-found Open Access Directory

Associate Professor Robin Peek and Peter Suber, Research Professor of Philosophy (at Earlham College), will soon launch a new wiki project called the Open Access Directory (OAD). GSLIS has agreed to host the OAD, with an external editorial board of international OA leaders overseeing the content. OAD is a wiki where the OA community can create and support simple factual lists about OA, starting with a over a half a dozen lists and adding more over time. Terry Plum, Assistant Dean for Technology and Director, GSLIS West, is serving as Technology Coordinator and Athanasia Pontika, GSLIS PhD student, serves as assistant editor. The wiki will officially launch on May 1st at:
http://oad.simmons.edu

The full press release is available as a PDF (download).

April 24, 2008: New MLIP Cohort Announced

GSLIS has announced the 2008 MLIP Cohort. They will begin their studies in May. Please join us in welcoming Maria Carpenter, Director of Advancement, Marketing, and Communications, Northeastern University Libraries; Jolie Graybill, Social and Behavioral Sciences Team Leader, Cline Library, Northern Arizona University; Jerome Offord, Jr., Director of Diversity Initiatives, Association of Research Libraries; Mary Piorun, Associate Director for Technology Initiatives and Resource Management, University of Massachusetts Medical School; Michele Reid, Director, Hoover Library, McDaniel College; and Gary Shaffer, Director of Marketing, Sacramento Public Library.

For their bios, as well as more information about the PhD concentration in Managerial Leadership in the Information Professions, please see: www.simmons.edu/gslis/academics/
programs/doctoral/phdmlip/people/index.shtml.

April 10, 2008: MSLA-SIG Second Annual Student Conference

The Massachusetts School Library Association Student Interest Group (MSLA-SIG) will hold its Second Annual Student Conference on Saturday, April 26th.
If you're interested in school libraries OR if you are thinking about working with children and young adults, don't miss this event.

This year's theme is "Getting the Word Out: Marketing Your Library" and will include a keynote address by MSLA President Sandy Kelly.

The conference is free for Simmons students and $5 for others. Registration is required for everyone in order to reserve lunch. To register please download the registration form, fill out page one, and mail it to MSLA, c/o Elisabeth Zimmer, 15 Belmont St #1, Somerville, 02143. GSLIS students can also drop the form into Elisabeth Zimmer's folder in the student lounge.

April 4, 2008: Linda Braun Receives Award for Excellence in Online Education

GSLIS Adjunct Faculty member Linda Braun was one of only seven faculty members nationwide who received a WISE Award for Excellence in Online Education. Faculty were nominated by a WISE student from an institution other than their own, based on their instructional style.

Braun has been teaching LIS 460 (Technology and the School Library Media Center) and LIS 467 (Web Development and Information Architecture) online since 2006. Simmons College has been a member of the WISE Consortium since it began in 2005.

For more information, please see the article in the Spring 2008 WISE newsletter at: www.wisepedagogy.com/newsletter/Spring08/index.htm

March 21, 2008: Crossing Borders

The March issue of the Simmons GSLIS InfoLink is now available. The six-page issue is all about "Crossing Borders," be it by spending Thanksgiving in Amman, blending face-to-face and online learning, bringing boys back into the library, or traveling from Baghdad to Boston to

pursue a doctoral degree. Read all about those stories and more by downloading the PDF; an online supplement, with additional content, is also available.

March 19, 2008: Chen Named ALA Beta Phi Mu Award Recipient

Congratulations to Ching-chih Chen, who has been named the recipient of this year's ALA Beta Phi Mu Award. This annual award, donated by the Beta Phi Mu International Library Science Honorary Society, is presented to a library school faculty member or to an individual for distinguised service to education in librarianship. Please see the full press release on the ALA website, or download the PDF.

March 15, 2008: GSLIS Grads Cody and Tucker-Raymond Named LJ Movers & Shakers

Congratulations to Alison Cody, a December 2007 graduate, and Caleb Tucker-Raymond, a 2000 graduate, both of whom were on Library Journal's 2008 list of Movers & Shakers.

Cody is the Public Relations/Instruction Librarian at Loyola Notre Dame Library in Baltimore. Tucker-Raymond is currently the L-Net ProjectCoordinator at Portland, OR's Multnomah County Library.

For the full article, please see: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6535095.html

For the profile on Alison Cody, please see: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6535112.html

For the profile on Caleb Tucker-Raymond, please see: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6535084.html

March 4, 2008: New GSLIS CE Program Manager Named

We are pleased to announce that Kris Liberman is the new Continuing Education Program Manager. Kris has been serving as temporary program manager since December. An alumna of Simmons GSLIS, Kris joins us after working in corporate libraries such as Ernst & Young, Fidelity, and Lotus. Kris has been active in SLA and ASIST, as well as with our own GSLIS Alumni Board, serving this year as Vice President. Kris's experiences, skills, enthusiasm, and commitment to GSLIS will be an asset for the program and the school. Please join us in welcoming Kris to GSLIS!

February 15, 2008: GSLIS Goes Hollywood

In the February InfoLink, we take GSLIS West! The February Up Front profiles GSLIS West student Jeremy Smith who co-produced and edited the video, "Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property." Wendy Brown, the subject of this month's

Snapshot profile, is one of the Co-Chairs of the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG) - which happens to be hosting a screening of the video on February 27. Then set your sights further west and read all about GSLIS alum Linda Demmers LS'73, a noted library facilities planner who also happens to be married to a Hollywood producer. Download the PDF.

Jan. 30, 2008: Professor Peter Hernon Named ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year

The Association of College and Research Libaries (ACRL) has just named GSLIS Professor Peter Hernon as the Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The award, sponsored by YBP Library Services, recognizes an outstanding member of the library profession who has made a significant national or international contribution to academic/research librarianship and library development.

"Dr. Peter Hernon was selected because of his substantive body of research over a career of more than 30 years," stated Award Committee Chair Cynthia Steinhoff in the ACRL press release. "Dr. Hernon's work, which focuses on such varied topics as assessment, government information, servicec quality and leadership, addresses very real issues and questions that academic librarians face every day."

To read the press release in its entirety, please see: www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2008/january2008/hernon08.htm

Jan. 28, 2008: GSLIS Professor to Work with MLK, Jr. Papers

Assistant Professor Tywanna Whorley will be one of a small team of specialists working to catalog two major collections of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers.

In Fall 2007, Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center (HGARC) received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to catalog its extensive Martin Luther King, Jr. collection. Whorley will be working with BU staff, as well as staff at the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center Consortium and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, institutions that also received Mellon Foundation grants.

The goal of the project is to create a resource that makes the catalogues of two major King collections searchable by subject and name. Combined inventories will be created by using a new open-source program, the Archivists' Toolkit. The Toolkit is specifically designed to assist with the process of listing and organizing manuscript collections.

Along with the experience Whorley will bring back to the classroom and the GSLIS community, she will be supervising several interns from Simmons College each semester who will benefit from working with the Archivists' Toolkit and the MLK Jr. archive. This semester, Steven Booth and Amber Moore will be working on the project.

Dec. 18, 2007: GSLIS Professors Tang and Denn Awarded Second Grant

GSLIS Professors Rong Tang and Sheila Denn have been awarded a second $15,000 grant in support of their project "User Based Question Answering: An Exploratory Study of Community Generated Information Exchange in Yahoo!Answers" (please see description below). In addition to the November grant from the Simmons College President's Fund for Faculty Excellence, they have received this new award from the OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Program (LISRGP).

Dec. 12, 2007: Fall Podcasts

For the past year, the GSLIS Tech Lab has been podcasting GSLIS lectures and events. Some of the latest events include "Babies & Bathwater: Re-Imagining Academic Libraries" (Peter Hirtle and Sarah Thomas), "Rising from the Ashes: The Story of the Iraq National Library and Archives" (Dr. Saad Eskander), and "Very Hue: A Report on the Vietnamese Librarian Project" (Terry Plum). To listen, go to http://gslis.simmons.edu/podcasts.

Dec. 5, 2007: Read the Latest Dispatches from the Field

Dean Michele Cloonan and Fellow for Dean's Initiatives Meaghan K. O'Connor traveled to Amman in late November as part of an ongoing initiative to train Iraqi librarians. (For more information on the program, see the Simmons GSLIS International Initiatives page.) Read about their experiences in our Dispatches from the Field blog.