Staff Newsweb September 28, 2009 -- Number 1142

News Congratulations! CRL News and the Year Ahead	Human Resources Open Positions
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Congratulations!

Congratulations to all of the librarians who were reviewed in the 2008-2009 cycle. Particularly noteworthy are those who were promoted, received career status, and awarded distinguished status in the Librarian rank. Join us in commending these librarians on their outstanding achievements.

Promotion from Associate Librarian to Librarian:

• Elaine Adams, Science and Engineering Library
• Kelli Ham, Biomedical Library
• June Kim, Law Library
• Liladhar Pendse, Collections, Research & Instructional Services
• Sharon Shafer, Library Information Technology

Career Status:

• Kelley Bachli, Special Collections
• Sharon Benamou, Cataloging & Metadata Center
• Hong Cheng, East Asian Library
• Chamya Kincy, Cataloging & Metadata Center
• Jennifer Osorio, Collections, Research & Instructional Services
• Nina Schneider, Clark Library

Jenifer Abramson and Michelle Torre

CRL News and the Year Ahead

CRL was founded in 1949 to promote access to collections for advanced research and learning. Over the past 60 years, thanks to strength in numbers and the ability to identify common interests, CRL libraries have amassed a wealth of shared research collections, a body of materials larger and more diverse than any single library could afford to assemble on its own.

With the recent economic downturn, our community faces two major challenges. Cuts in collection and personnel budgets put our ability to adequately support research and teaching at risk. And many libraries lack the space and/or capital necessary to keep pace with collection growth. CRL services and resources for the coming year are designed to help libraries surmount these two challenges.

1. Supporting Research and Teaching

We continue to make new digital content available to researchers at your institution. Last year we digitized 740,000 pages and 4,322 items, bringing the number of pages of books, archives, journals, and other unique and uncommon materials available digitally through CRL to more than three million. This fall, an additional one million pages of Latin American newspapers will be available in the digital World Newspaper Library and we expect to begin digitization of African and South Asian newspapers.

Webinars in October and January will familiarize reference, collection, and interlibrary loan specialists and researchers at your institution with CRL’s major collections. Pre-conference forums at the Charleston Conference and reviews in The Charleston Advisor will provide your collection development and reference specialists with critical analyses of research resources ranging from electronic theses and dissertations from British universities to Latin American public opinion data.

We will initiate a new awards program to recognize creative uses of primary source materials by research and teaching faculty, librarians and library staff, graduate students, and others within the CRL community.

2. Managing Print

With the University of California and a number of interested consortia, libraries, and other appropriate organizations, we are exploring how to leverage regional and local print management efforts to significantly reduce costs and increase accessibility of serials holdings for CRL libraries. We are concentrating on journals, news, and government documents. Between now and January 2010, we hope to produce a blueprint for a North American network of serials repositories that can be formed within the next three years; the (digital and traditional) services connected with such a network; and the level of investment required. We will present an action plan and corresponding timeframe for achieving these goals at ALA Midwinter in January.

At the same time we are actively promoting confidence in digital archiving. To help CRL libraries increase the return on their investment in digital resources and repositories, we are conducting in-depth assessments of Portico, HathiTrust, and Scholars Portal: digital repositories of content of high interest to CRL libraries. We will report on these assessments at ALA Midwinter as well, and will propose specific measures for the CRL community at our April Council meeting.

Below is a brief timeline of CRL events this year. Further information is available on the CRL Website, or will be provided in advance of the event.

I hope that you find this report useful and encouraging. Many thanks for your continued commitment to CRL and to the vital preservation role it fulfills.

Bernard F. Reilly
President, CRL

Timeline

October 5, 6, 7: The Future of Primary Sources: a Series of Micro-Webcasts for Researchers. Faculty and other researchers are invited to participate in these brief (22.5-minute) Webcasts-- designed for busy schedules--that will explore challenges to the survival of electronic news, social science data, and chemical information. More information is available at www.crl.edu/acls/

October 15: Primary Source Awards Program. A new annual awards program will recognize research and teaching faculty, librarians and library staff, graduate students, and others within the CRL community for the creative use of primary source materials in research, teaching, and access. The awards will provide reference, ILL, and collection development staff at CRL libraries with information on how researchers use materials in major CRL areas of collecting focus: newspapers, archives, government documents, and popular journals.

October 14: Access and Collections Webinar. This 90-minute webinar will introduce librarians, library staff, and faculty to CRL resources.

October 15: Global Resources Update: A Breakfast Briefing Sponsored by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) A report for ARL library directors on CRL’s work with Portico, HathiTrust, LOCKSS, Scholars Portal, and others to expand digital access to scholarly resources while ensuring the preservation of critical legacy materials.

November 5: CRL at the Charleston Conference. Two pre-conferences for CRL collection development and reference specialists will explore the changing paths to digital access to electronic theses and dissertations from British and European universities; and the features and flaws of the major collections of digitized newspapers.

January 13: Southeast Asian Collections Webinar. This 90-minute webinar for librarians, library staff, and faculty at CRL libraries will provide an introduction to resources for the study of Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries in the region.

January 15-19: CRL Reports at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. We will report on our assessment of two major digital repositories: Portico and the HathiTrust. Our report will focus on how, and to what extent, those repositories and regional print archiving efforts can enable CRL libraries to reduce legacy costs and expand digital access.

April 22-23: Annual Meeting of the CRL Council of Voting Members. Once again this year the meeting will be Web event. It will include the regular CRL business meeting followed by a forum on CRL digitization, archiving and collection-building services. Details will be available in December.

Human Resources

Open Positions

Terry Leonard