December 2010

The Simmons ASIS&T Student Chapter was named student chapter of the year. Members of the chapter (and advisor Linnea Johnson, pictured at left) were presented with the award at the ASIS&T annual meeting in October, in Pittsburgh, PA.

Georgia Alexander ’05LS has been appointed cataloger at the University of the West Indies, Main Library, on the St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago.

Carl Antonucci ’93LS, Vice President of the Simmons GSLIS Alumni Association Board, became Director of Library Services at Central Connecticut State University.

Edward Bander ’56LS is the author of a novel, The Hidden History of Essex Law School, published by Trafford Publishing. The novel is about a law librarian at a fictitious law school in Boston.

Raynna Bowlby, GSLIS West Recruiting and Administrative Coordinator, presented at the Library Assessment Conference, co-hosted by the Association of Research Libraries, the University of Virginia Library, and the University of Washington Libraries. Bowlby co-led a workshop titled “Working Effectively with LibQUAL+®” and presented a paper, “Are We There Yet? Aligning Planning and Metrics — Strategically.” She also presented “The Balanced Scorecard: Making Academic Library Assessment Strategic” for the Academic Libraries Section at the 2010 New England Library Association Conference.

Students in the new course, LIS 531V Concepts in Cultural Heritage Informatics, taught by Michèle Cloonan and Martha Mahard, have made class visits to the Gropius House (Historic New England property), the Concord Free Public Library, and the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. Groups of students from the class will be profiling these institutions, along with the American Textile History Museum, the Connecticut Historical Society, and the Shelburne Museum. These profiles are the first phase of project development and analysis as we work with the sites on specific projects that will form the basis for the LIS 531X Practicum course which will be offered for the first time this coming spring.

Peter Droese ’00LS, obtained his Project Management Professional Certification (PMP) in August 2010. He has been employed since 2008 as an Information Resource Specialist in the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Commonwealth Medicine Division.

Prof. Peter Hernon’s 50th book has been published. He is the editor of Shaping the Future: Advancing the Understanding of Leadership (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010) http://lu.com/ search.cfm. The book, based on the Simmons Ph.D. program in Managerial Leadership in the Information Professions, provides an overview of that program, and sees leadership as an area needing research. There is also coverage of case studies, including a reprinting of Professor Emeritus A.J. Anderson’s problem-solving model and an overview of scenario planning and examples of student work.

Prof. Lisa Hussey recently gave two presentations at Library Research Seminar V: a solo presentation titled “Diversity and Conflict: What is the Conversation?” and a joint presentation with Diane Velasquez, Dominican University, “Forced Advocacy: How the Community Responds to Library Budget Cuts.”

Congratulations to the Simmons GSLIS Emerging Leaders, a program sponsored by the American Library Association. This program enables approximately 100 library workers get on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership. The new group of leaders includes Linnea Johnson ’04LS, GSLIS manager of the Technology Laboratory; Miranda Rivers, 2009 ALA Spectrum Scholar and LISSA treasurer; and Andromeda Yelton ’10LS.

Prof. Mary Wilkins Jordan is presenting at several conferences this month, including the West Virginia Annual Library Conference, “Connecting With Communities,” the Academic Library Association of Ohio, “Stressed for Success: Academic Librarians Confront Stress in the Workplace,” and the Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, “All Stressed Out? Enumerating and Eliminating Stress in the Library.”

Chris Markman ’10LS presented his paper “Media and Metaphysics: How the Motion Picture IP War Was Lost” at Piracy; a conference hosted by the Department of English & American Literature at Brandeis, on Friday, October October 22, 2010. For details visit http://sites.google.com/site/piracyahoy/.

Assistant Dean Terry Plum presented a paper co-authored with Jeannette Bastian, Ross Harvey, and Martha Mahard at the 2010 ARL’s Library Assessment Conference, “Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment.” The paper, “Cultural Heritage Informatics and the GSLIS Digital Curriculum Laboratory: A Cyberlearning Platform for the Evaluation of Digital Asset Management Systems in the Context of Student Learning Outcomes,” is available online at http://gslis.simmons.edu/dcl/publications. Plum also coauthored a presentation, “Measuring Use of Licensed Electronic Resources: A Second Iteration of the MINES for Libraries Survey on Scholars Portal and Other Resources for the Ontario Council of University Libraries,” with Catherine Davidson, York University; Martha Kyrillidou, Association of Research Libraries; and Dana Thomas, Ryerson University.

Rebecca Reznik-Zellen ’06LS published an article, “Representation and Recognition of Subject Repositories,” in the September/October 2010 issue of D-Lib Magazine: http:// www.dlib.org/dlib/september10/adamick/09adamick.html.

This fall, GSLIS student Lori Satter has written and selfpublished the e-book You Want Me to Do What? Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking for New Educators. This source is geared toward all types of educators, including librarians and archivists. For more information please visit Lori's website: lorisatter.com.

Prof. Rong Tang participated in usability studies and design meetings for the re-design of the Harvard Catalyst website version 3: http://catalyst.harvard.edu/.

The team behind the new Digital Curriculum Lab (DCL) has been busy presenting the project to the professional community. Molly Duggan ’10LS, Digital & Interface Assistant, and Mary Bennett, Technology Assistant, conducted a demonstration at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in October, “Building a Virtual Archives and Preservation Curriculum Laboratory at Simmons GSLIS.” In addition, two posters were presented at the 9th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference, sponsored by the Colleges of the Fenway Teaching & Learning Collaborative, held at Emmanuel College on October 28 and 29. The posters were “DCL @ Simmons GSLIS: Building a Digital Curriculum Lab” by Mary Bennett and Molly Duggan, and “A Virtual Archives and Preservation Curriculum Laboratory at Simmons GSLIS” by Ross Harvey and Martha Mahard. To learn more about the Digital Curriculum Lab, visit http://calliope.simmons.edu/dcl/lab.

Got news? Please send it to us at infolink@simmons.edu.