Jennifer Acker, HVCC, receives the CALA Outstanding Service Award. Jennifer is joined by members of the CALA Coordinating Committee and her colleagues.

CDLC will be accepting applications for the 2015 Regional Bibliographic Databases Program grants in January. These grants may be used to support cataloging retrospective conversion projects or metadata projects. How can your institution use these funds? Watch for details!

The Direct Access Program (DAP) working group has proposed recommendations to enhance this highly-valued CDLC program. We will be sharing the recommendations with CDLC membership with time for member input and comment prior to implementing changes.

CaDiLaC and the CDLC Union List of Serials have been updated! In addition to a new interface, some new features of CaDiLaC include facets and display of book covers. If you haven't used CaDiLac recently, give it a try!

 The Medical Information Services Program allotment for 2014/15 is being distributed to participating libraries. If you have any questions, please contact Christopher Tosh.

 Also in medical library news, the Hospital Library Services Program EBSCO DynaMed subscription has been finalized. Thank you to participating libraries. Pooling resources resulted in a cost-savings for these medical libraries.

 Eric Trahan from Mohawk Valley Library System has joined CDLC's Committee on Resource Sharing. 

 Sharon O'Brien, also from MVLS, has joined CDLC's Regional Automation Advisory Committee (RAAC) as a public library system representative.  Nancy Poehlmann, University at Albany, has also joined RAAC as an academic representative.

William "Bill" Kanalley is retiring at the end of December after 40 years of service at Siena College. In those years he had a multitude of duties, including bibliographer, collection development, special collections, and serving as Interim Director. Bill is best known to the CDLC staff for his work on New York Heritage. He was one of the first people trained in digitization by CDLC. The procedures and guidelines have gone through many changes since then, but Bill is always unflappable in the face of this moving target. He is a model for other participants, consistently adding new material to his collection every month. He is eager to share his talents and knowledge, and he is always cheerful, even when encountering setbacks. We will miss his upbeat attitude and hope that we can convince him to volunteer with Siena's New York Heritage Collection in his retirement!

Regina Vertone and Jennifer Anderson from The Sage Colleges presented Library to Learning Commons at the New York Library Association (NYLA) Conference in Saratoga Springs in November.  Also at the conference, their colleagues Abigail Stambach and Lauren Puzier did a Pecha Keuka session entitled Pins, Smores and Doodles.

The Dudley Observatory has a new online catalog!  Their collection of rare books, journals, publications, pamphlets and more is now available through OPALS.

The Dudley Observatory, miSci and the Albany Area Amateur Astronomers are offering Night Sky Adventures at miSci on the third Tuesday of each month. Go here for details.

 The Schenectady County Historical Society presents a lecture, Shtetl on the Mohawk: Jews of Schenectady, on Sat., Jan. 10th at 2:00 p.m. Harvey Strum, a professor of history and political science at Sage College of Albany, will discuss the history of Schenectady's Jewish community. Details are here.