Simmons College

Disaster in the Stacks!

When: Thursday, November 5, 2009 ,7:00 p.m.
Where: Faculty and Staff Dining Room, MCB, Simmons College, Boston, MA

The Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists presents:

Disaster in the Stacks!
Disaster Prevention and Awareness in Libraries and Archives

November 5, 7 p.m.
Faculty and Staff Dining room in MCB

Participants:

• Gregor Trinkaus-Randall, Mass Library Board's Disaster and Emergency Assistance director
• Susan Pyzynski, beloved Simmons professor and Associate Librarian for Technical Services at Harvard's Houghton Library
• Carie McGinnis, Houghton's preservation librarian
• Lori Foley, NEDCC

More information on each is provided on the SCoSAA website.

Lunchtime Lecture: Lisa Woronzoff

When: Thursday, November 5, 2009, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Where: P-207, Simmons College, Boston, MA

The GSLIS Lunchtime Lecture series returns this fall. Lectures take place on Thursdays from 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. in P-207. Thursday, November 19th, Lisa Woronzoff presents "Gender: Select M or F or ... The classification and language of gender"

World Usability Day

When: Thursday, November 12, 2009, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Where: Linda Paresky Conference Center, Simmons College, Boston, MA

November 12, 2009 is the World Usability Day. Simmons GSLIS (Graduate School of Library and Information Science) Usability Lab, in partnering with the Student Chapters of American Society of Information Science and Technology and Special Library Association, will host an event in the morning of November 12th at Linda Paresky Conference Center (3rd floor of Main College Building), Simmons College. The event is open to the public, and the registration is free.

Details of the event:

9:00-9:15 - Welcome
9:15-10:00 - Keynote: The Top Ten Myths About Usability. Tom Tullis, Vice President of Usability at Fidelity Investments
10:00-11:00 - Usability Lab as a Collaborative Platform for Applied Research, Experiential Learning, and Community Services. Rong Tang (Director, Simmons GSLIS Usability Lab) and Linnea Johnson (Manager, Simmons GSLIS Usability Lab)
11:00-12:00 - Poster session and tours of Simmons GSLIS Usability Lab

The keynote speaker Thomas S. (Tom) Tullis is Vice President of Usability at Fidelity Investments and Adjunct Professor at Bentley University in the Human Factors in Information Design program. He joined Fidelity in 1993 and was instrumental in the development of the company's usability department. Its facilities include a state-of-the-art Usability Lab. Prior to joining Fidelity, he held positions at Canon Information Systems, McDonnell Douglas, Unisys Corporation, and Bell Laboratories. He and Fidelity's usability team have been featured in a number of publications, including Newsweek, Business 2.0, Money, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Tullis received a B.A. from Rice University, an M.A. in experimental psychology from New Mexico State University, and a Ph.D. in engineering psychology from Rice University. During his 30 years of experience in human-computer interface studies, he has published more than 50 papers in numerous technical journals and has been an invited speaker at national and international conferences. He also holds eight U.S. patents. He is co-author (with Bill Albert) of the book "Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics" (Morgan Kaufman, March 2008) and co-author (with Bill Albert and Donna Tedesco) of the forthcoming book, "Beyond the Usability Lab: Conducting Large-Scale User Experience Studies"(Morgan Kaufman, Jan. 2010).

The poster session will feature following GSLIS student usability projects:

• Borden, Daniel. Usability Testing: The Boston Redevelopment Authority Zoning Webpage
• Chu, Ellen. Child's Usability Test: A Comparison Between the ICDL and Brooklyn Public Library Search Interfaces
• Gulyamov, Otabek. UCLA Library Web Usability
• Lee, Kyoung sun. Running a Usability Test: Searching in SIRIS
• McMahon, Mark. Usability Testing: Faceted Browsing
• Rodzvilla, John. Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: Testing the Usability of Online Research Guides in Academic Libraries

Registration is required to attend the event. The deadline for registration is: November 9, 2009.

To register, please click on the following link:

http://gsliswud.eventbrite.com/

For directions and maps of Simmons College, please click on the following link:

http://www.simmons.edu/overview/directions/

ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture: Is There a Future for Special Libraries?

When: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 ,5:00 p.m.
Where: Kotzen Meeting Center, Simmons College, Boston, MA

Presented by Toby Pearlstein ‘77LS
Retired, Director of Global Information Services

Abstract
2009 is the 100th anniversary of the Special Libraries Association, making this an ideal time to consider if there is a future for special libraries (and the skill set of librarians who work in them). Are we prepared to answer the question of whether in the struggle for our survival we will be "the fittest" or if special libraries will become a casualty of the ongoing information revolution? In exploring these questions Dr. Pearlstein will take a look at the roles special librarians have typically played as intermediaries and arbiters of information and knowledge in their parent organizations, discuss the increasing challenges to these roles from both within and outside the profession, and conclude by taking a pragmatic look at some ways to position ourselves for survival and success in a future of ongoing economic and social turbulence.

Speaker Biography
Toby Pearlstein retired from the position of Global Director of Information Services for Bain & Company, an international management consulting firm, in December 2007. During her 14 years at Bain she was responsible for oversight management of Bain's information centers including global vendor contract negotiation, budgeting, evaluation and acquisition of print and electronic products and services, and coordination of global information services policies and global IS team professional development standards. She was actively involved in Bain's early knowledge management program and the development of its intranet platform including a portal for end user desktop access to contracted research resources.
An historian by training with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and an M.A. in American History from the University of New Hampshire, she also holds a Masters of Library Science and Doctorate degree from Simmons GSLIS.

Dr. Pearlstein is a Fellow of the Special Libraries Association and became a member of the SLA Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2007, she was the recipient of the Boston Chapter of SLA's Distinguished Service Award. She has been Chair of both the Transportation and Business & Finance Divisions of SLA as well as Chair of the Association's Professional Development Committee and a member of the Research Committee and the Finance Committee. She is a frequent presenter at conferences and contributor to professional publications including most recently a series of articles co-authored with Jim Matarazzo for Searcher Magazine focusing on survival lessons for special libraries.

RSVP
http://gslis.simmons.edu/signup/
by November 10, 2009

Lunchtime Lecture: Melanie Kimball, Ph.D.

When: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Where: Simmons College, Palace Road Building, P-207

The GSLIS Lunchtime Lecture series returns this fall. Lectures take place on Thursdays from 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. in P-207. Thursday, November 19th, GSLIS Assistant Professor Melanie Kimball, Ph.D., presents "Teaching Children ‘To See Beauty and to Live It': A Library/Museum Collaboration, 1914-1918."