Dr. Jenny Doctor has been appointed Director of the Belfer Audio Archive, effective January 2012. She will hold a concurrent appointment as a faculty member in the Newhouse School of Public Communications. A faculty member in the Department of Music at the University of York (UK) from 2005 - 2011, Doctor is a musicologist who has specialized in twentieth-century British composers and the development of sound recording technologies.

Read the full press release.

We welcome the following new Library Technicians:

Elizabeth Breslin, Library Technician in Acquisition Cataloging, is from the Rochester, NY area. Previously, she has been a Library and Archives Volunteer at the Brian Sutton-Smith Library & Archives of Play located at The Strong, (formally The Strong National Museum of Play) in Rochester. She has an MLS degree from the University at Buffalo and a B.A. degree in history from SUNY Geneseo.

Jeanette Norris, Library Technician in Acquisitions & Cataloging, came to SU from the Cataloging department at the University of Central Oklahoma. In addition to working in libraries, she has taught Civics, French and English. Jeanette holds a M.A. in European and Russian studies from Yale University (2009), where she focused on identity politics in Britain and France, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Oklahoma (2005).

Joe Sweeney, Library Technician in the Learning Commons, received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Design and Management at Parsons the New School for Design. He first started working with Syracuse University this past spring at the Science and Technology Library. Previously Joe worked in the dean's office at Eugene Lang College and in development for The New School in New York City.

Christopher Ely, Library Technician in Acquisitions & Cataloging, previously worked in cataloging at Syracuse University Library in 2008 as a temporary employee. He has performed cataloging for the Verizon Foundation's Thinkfinity Project through the iSchool. Christopher has also worked as a librarian and library assistant in academic, medical, and public libraries. He has an MLS from Syracuse University as well as a B.A. in English from SU.

Daniel Matthews, Library Technician in Access & Resource Sharing, is currently a student in Syracuse University's MLIS program. He most recently worked at Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester as a reference desk assistant.

On a lovely fall Friday, October 7, at 2:30 p.m., Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the Syracuse University Library Facility on Jamesville Avenue, adjacent to the Hawkins Building. A stand-room-only crowd of over 100 faculty, students, and staff were in attendance to celebrate the occasion.

In addition to Thorin, speakers included Syracuse University Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric F. Spina, David Nutting, Chairman and CEO of VIP Structures, Inc., the firm that will construct the facility; James Watts, chair of the Humanities Council and professor of religion; Judy Mower, SU Trustee and member of the Library Advisory Board; and Melissa Welshans, president of the Graduate Student Organization.

The Board of Trustees approved the Library's plan to construct the facility last May, with construction expected to be completed by fall 2012.

The 20,000 square foot building will house approximately 1.2 million volumes and will include a processing area and conference room. An ideal environment of constantly maintained temperature and humidity (50 degrees and 35% relative humidity) will significantly extend the life of materials in the facility. Most important, this facility will enable the library to support the long-term research needs of the faculty by providing space for collections growth.

Scholarly Communication Librarian Yuan Li has been selected for the American Library Association's 2012 Class of Emerging Leaders. The class of 30 was selected from a field of 240 applicants. Yuan will be sponsored by the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA), which will provide financial support for Yuan's attendance at both of the ALA conferences.

The Emerging Leaders (EL) program is a leadership development program which enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. It puts participants on the fast track to ALA committee volunteerism as well as other professional library-related organizations.

Loom: a Novel by Thérèse Soukar Chehade was awarded the 2011 Arab American Book Award for fiction by the Arab American National Museum, a Smithsonian Institution affiliate located in Dearborn, Michigan.


New e-book titles available
There are now over 100 titles in the SU Press Digital Collection available on campus to SU faculty and students. Created as a way to make SU Press scholarship more accessible and to increase awareness of this valuable resource, the SU Press collection includes full-text editions of SU Press books, beginning in 2008.

New additions to the collection include: The Encyclopedia of New York State, Modern Arab American fiction: a reader's guide by Steven Salaita, Back channel negotiation: secrecy in the Middle East peace process by Anthony Wanis-St. John, American Hebrew literature: writing Jewish national identity in the United States by Michael Weingrad, and Inside the TV writer's room: practical advice for succeeding in television edited by Lawrence Myers.

Following the successful opening of its current exhibit Just One Word: Plastics, Syracuse University Library received a pledge of $150,000 from Glenn and Patsy Beall to create a permanent home for the display of materials from the Plastics Collection.

Room 610 (the Tolley Room) on the sixth floor of Bird Library, which arguably boasts one of the best views on campus, will be renovated to create a quiet reading room with displays of artifacts from the SU Plastics Collection, as well as kiosk access to the SU Plastics Collection website.

The concept for the Plastics Artifact and Reading Room includes glass entry doors that open up to the hallway, increasing the visibility of the room on the sixth floor. The design also provides space for rotating displays of objects from the Plastics Collection using lockable, lit display cases with pull out display/storage drawers and flexible shelving to feature the colorful plastic objects. A bookcase on the back wall of the room will house books about plastics history, generation of plastics, and the plastics industry.

The room will have soft seating, end tables, and lamps that accommodate laptop use and quiet reading. A computer kiosk for interactive display and research of the entire plastics collection will also be available for use.

The room will be available for use during regular sixth floor hours and for receptions and gatherings by reservation.

The Plastics Artifacts and Reading Room is scheduled to open fall 2012.

The Special Collections Research Center has entered into a partnership with UCLA's Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) to add its 489 cuneiform tablets to the CDLI collections. All texts are Sumerian administrative documents, with the exception of one letter and were previously published in Marcel Sigrist's 1983 volume, "Textes économiques néo-sumériens de l'Université de Syracuse." These are now available in the CDLI database.

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators, and historians of science to make available online the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. There are estimated to be more that 500,000 of these documents currently kept in public and private collections, of which more than 246,000 have now been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.

For more information, contact Sean M. Quimby, Director of Special Collections at smquimby@syr.edu.

It is almost time for us to honor another distinguished co-worker! Please consider nominating a co-worker who has made significant contributions to the service of the Syracuse University Library user community.

What's the process for nominating, you ask?
Send a brief letter to any member of the DSA committee (listed below) outlining your candidate's contributions. Please provide specific examples. Ask for 2-5 letters of reference for your candidate from his/her co-workers and supporters; one should come from the candidate's supervisor. Additional details can be found here.

Who can be nominated?
Any SUL employee with at least 3 years of service*

*Exceptions:

-any previous winners 

-current DSA panel members 

-current SULA Executive Board members (Pat Bench, Marianne Hanley, Charlie Russo, Fantasia Thorne) 

 

Only individual nominees are allowed (no dual or team nominees).  

 

Please send nominations to either Robert Capuano, Nicole Dittrich, Russell Silverstein, Donna Sullivan, Scott Warren, or Patrick Williams.     

 

Submit nominations by Tuesday, November 1.  

     

Syracuse University Library and the Office of Residence Life are sponsoring the sixth annual Bird After Dark Library Lock-in on Friday, November 4 from 9:45 p.m. to 1:00 am.

We're looking for volunteers to help out from 9:00 p.m. to 1:15 a.m. (at the latest). Some of the duties will include staffing Minute to Win It game stations, monitoring floors during rounds, scoring during party breaks, and taking pictures and video. Volunteers will be required to attend a short orientation session the week of the event.

If you'd like to volunteer, sign up using this Doodle Poll.

Please contact Camille Chesley at cechesle@syr.edu with any questions.

Don't forget to mark your calendar for our annual triple-threat United Way Auction Extravaganza on Friday, December 2 in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons. Those creatively talented among us: we need your photos, your jewelry, your needlecraft items, and/or your artwork for our art auction. And this year, we're suggesting you create your own team of family, friends, or co-workers to put together a bounteous basket to bid on!

Last but certainly not least, please start thinking about what you can contribute to those ever-popular brown bag ticket drawings. Your unwanted items may be someone else's treasure. You can drop off that extra measuring cup set that's been in your kitchen drawer or your latest landscape painting anytime between now and December 1 to any team member (Carol Cavalluzzi, Nancy Cohen, Sue Ehlers, Pat Hunt, Dorcas MacDonald, Matt Reschke, Penelope Singer) or to the Library Business Office.

Thank you for supporting our community through your participation in the Library United Way activities, and by filling out your pledge card.

Since last month, we've received a number of suggestions and comments left on the two-sided suggestion board, located on the first floor of Bird Library:

• The lighting stinks
• Refill stapler
• Don't close the upper floors at night 
• Extend the hours of the Safire Room 
• More printers/computers on the first floor 

If you have a response you'd like us to post, please contact Pamela McLaughlin at pwmclaug@syr.edu.

Got news? Please feel free to send us any news items that you would like to share with colleagues -- graduations, weddings, new babies, travels, and such. As always, we welcome your feedback, comments, questions, or story ideas. Send your contributions to libcom@syr.edu.

Many thanks for your interest!