Month: August 2011

2011-08-29

From left to right:
Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing, Mortenson Center Associate Director Susan Schnuer, Mortenson Center Director Barbara J. Ford, Champaign Mayor Don Gerard

The Mortenson Center for Inte rnational Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library was selected to receive a 2011 Champaign-Urbana International Humanitarian Award for its efforts to facilitate international cooperation through research and education.  The cities of Champaign and Urbana and the 2011 Champaign-Urbana International Humanitarian Awards Steering Committee honored the Mortenson Center on September 29, 2011.

The organization works to strengthen international ties among libraries and librarians worldwide for the promotion of international education, understanding, and peace.  Over 900 librarians from more than 90 countries, including China, South Africa, and Ukraine, have participated in professional development programs offered by the Mortenson Center—the only one of its kind in the world.

The Mortenson Center was nominated for the award by the Champaign Public Library .  Director, Marsha Grove, said, “The humanitarian impact of the Center’s work is the contribution to the betterment of libraries and the individuals they serve.  Libraries support literacy, education and research by providing individuals access to books, information and technology.  This allows people to improve their own lives and their communities.”

“My position here has allowed me to build on the work of its founding director, Marianna Tax Choldin, who took an idea and developed a unique and thriving program.  And, none of this would have been possible without support from Joan Hood in the Library’s Development Office and a generous gift from C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson,” said Barbara Ford, who serves as the second director of the Mortenson Center.  “The future of the Mortenson Center looks bright as we continue to receive support from foundations and organizations to expand our work into new countries and regions.”

“For the past 18 years, I have had the privilege of helping shape a highly successful professional development program,” said Susan Schnuer, Associate Center director.  “This experience has brought librarians from the state of Illinois in touch with colleagues from around the world, weaving a rich fabric of international collegial friendships.  It is a heart-warming experience to be contacted by former international visitors who share with us that their experience in the Champaign-Urbana community was a highlight of their professional and personal lives.”

“The Mortenson Center is a unique operation with a unique undertaking: to essentially promote world peace through librarians,” said Paula Kaufman, university librarian and dean of libraries at Illinois. “It has brought librarians from around the globe to Champaign-Urbana for learning, to develop a trade, by understanding that there are many effective forms of government. “

The Champaign-Urbana International Awards were originally created  in 2003 to honor individuals/organizations whose work has contributed significantly to international understanding, cooperation, friendship and development; recognize the richness of Champaign County’s international contributions, concerns and commitments in a variety of arenas, including agriculture, hospitality, humanitarian relief, human rights, research/education, and trade and business; and educate the public about the connections that exist between our local and global community.

For more information about the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, please visit www.library.illinois.edu/mortenson/ .

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2011-08-23

Official announcement from the Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries (IACRL):

The Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries is pleased to announce that Paula Kaufman, Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Dean of Libraries and University Librarian, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been selected as the Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year for 2011.  Dean Kaufman will receive the award at the Illinois Library Association Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 during the Illinois Library Association Annual Conference in Rosemont, Illinois.  The award is sponsored by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) and includes a $500 monetary award.

Dean Kaufman’s nominators cited “her extraordinary leadership in Illinois, her vision and strategic thinking for the future of libraries, and the generosity with which she shares her inspirations” as among the foremost reasons that she should receive this award.

Kaufman has served as University Librarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 1999, and before that was Dean of Libraries at the University of Tennessee for eleven years.  She also served as an administrator at Columbia University for many years, and held positions at Yale University and in a research service firm which she cofounded.  Kaufman holds degrees from Smith College (AB), Columbia University (MS), and University of New Haven (MBA).

Kaufman has been an active member of the Illinois Library Association since arriving as University Librarian at the University of Illinois in 1999.  She served on the ILA Public Policy Committee from 2007-2010.  She is a founding member of CARLI, serving on the CARLI Board of Directors since 2005.  In her CARLI work she has chaired both the search committee for the Executive Director and the Program Planning Committee.  During her tenure on the CARLI Board, the organization has expanded services to 153 Illinois institutions, offering interlibrary lending, e-resources brokering, and digital assets management.

Kaufman also serves on the Champaign Public Library Board of Trustees, where she has been closely involved with the design and launch of the Champaign Public Library.  In addition, she served on the Lincoln Trails Library System Board for seven years, from 2001-2007.  Beyond Illinois, Kaufman has held numerous leadership roles with the boards of directors of the Association of Research Libraries, the Center for Research Libraries, the Center for Institutional Cooperation (CIC), and many more.  In 2010, Dean Kaufman was recognized at the national level by American Library Association with the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award.

Kaufman’s contributions to the literature of library and information science are extensive and substantive—a consistent output ranging over 25+ years.  She has produced a large number of scholarly articles dealing with changes in publishing, challenges in library management, and innovations in services.  In 2001, she initiated an electronic newsletter, Issues in Scholarly Communication, which became a blog in 2005.  Her list of speaking engagements include local, state, national and international venues—she has been invited to speak in Canada, Russia, China, South Africa, India, and Japan.  She has also given presentations to non-library groups in Illinois in regard to the economic influence that a library has on its community.

Kaufman’s understanding of the power of digitization has led to the establishment of a highly productive scanning facility at the U of I Libraries that is digitizing collections from all over Illinois.  Similarly, she sees the high-density storage facility at the U of I as a vehicle for the library cooperation for which the state of Illinois is so well-known.

Kaufman recognizes the power of cooperation and the assets that are found in both the collections and the people in Illinois libraries.  She has an extraordinary gift for gathering colleagues to the table to seek new ways of thinking about how services are provided in Illinois libraries.  She often starts a dialog with the simple question, “What if we…?” followed by a new twist on collaboration or an idea from an entirely different area.  Her nominators cited her “willingness to take risks, to open the door so that many can be at the table, and to think about the usual from the unexpected perspective reflects her role as a truly inspirational leader and librarian.”

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2011-08-08

A new Occasional Paper, “Early Illinois Newspapers and Job Printers: The Terence A. Tanner Collection,” describes in detail one Chicago antiquarian bookseller’s efforts to write a revised history of nineteenth century Illinois newspapers and commercial job printers.

The paper’s author, Ryan A. Ross, worked closely with Tanner’s collection (spanning 1981 through 2002), which includes two published articles, copious notes, and research files, now located in the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library . The collection is a rich treasury of source material for the early history of Illinois and its newspapers and printers.

“The treasury of Tanner’s notes and published items is overwhelming in breadth and detail, and invaluable to the field of Illinois history,” writes Ross, an archivist in the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections. “Tanner’s two decades of research, while never completed, provide the most extensive study known of Illinois job printers and newspapers for the period 1814-58.”

Tanner devoted the last 20 years of his life to updating two standard, but incomplete, Illinois bibliographies: Franklin William Scott’s Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879 and Cecil K. Byrd’s A Bibliography of Illinois Imprints, 1814-58 . He donated his files to the University Library in 2002, one year before his death.

“On occasion the long hard work of the collector/researcher meets with the skills of the library archivist/scholar.  Such a meeting, of great importance for the history of printing and publishing in Illinois, occurred when Terry Tanner’s papers were given to the U of I Library. Ryan Ross organized this mass of material into 17 boxes and interpreted it for all future students of print culture in a useful guide to the Tanner Collection,” said James M. Cornelius, Ph.D., curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. “His 32-page descriptive inventory is both an overview of the topic and an introduction to serious research on an amazing—and scarcely examined—part of our intellectual past.”

Thomas F. Schwartz, Ph.D., currently the director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum and formerly the Illinois State Historian, said, “No individual knew more about Illinois newspapers than the late Terry Tanner. The significance of Tanner’s research notes is clearly explained in Ryan Ross’s seminal study of the Tanner archive. A must-read for those interested in the early history of Illinois.”

Ross’s paper, Occasional Paper No. 216, is available in PDF format through the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS), the digital repository for scholarly works produced at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Visit www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/18756 to view and download the paper in its entirety.

The Occasional Papers Series is published by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It consists of papers addressing varied aspects of librarianship, as well as those of specialized or contemporary interest, that generally are too lengthy or detailed for publication in a periodical.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2011-08-01

The John “Bud” Velde Conservation Lab needs your help to raise money for a Senior Conservator position. The role the conservation lab has in keeping our library system in top shape is discussed.

To make a gift to the Andrew W. Mellon Endowed Senior Conservator Fund, please visit https://www.library.illinois.edu/geninfo/policies/gifts/ or send checks made payable to “UIF/Mellon (770657)” to the Office of Library Advancement , 227 Library, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2011-08-01

The University Library is soliciting applications from faculty and graduate students who need to purchase numeric or spatial data for their research. Through a Data Purchase Program, funds will be awarded for such data purchases. The deadline has been extended to September 16, 2011 .

Visit https://www.library.illinois.edu/sc/purchase/ for more details, including a description of the program and how to apply.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).