2005 Service Quality Improvement Awards Ceremony
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Service Quality Improvement Award Committee for 2005

Left to right: Carol Jones, Janusz Kulakowski, Roy Bohlander, Diane Kaplan,
Danuta A. Nitecki (Sponsor), Bernadette Cioffi (ex-officio), Liliane McClenning

A delicious cake congratulates the 2005 Service Quality Awards recipients!
Associate Universiy Librarian Danuta Nitecki introduced the ceremony with thanks to the
Award Committee members and a few words on the history of this Award, now in its sixth year

University Librarian, Alice Prochaska begins with honoring two outstanding student library employees:

Nahaliel Kanfer, Electronic Collection Department, is being congratulated by
Alice Prochaska, University Librarian

While an undergraduate student, Nahaliel Kanfer has worked in the Electronic Collections Department with the On-line Access to Consolidated Information and Serials Project (OACIS) since September 2003. He has handled in an exceptional manner the challenges of both evaluating software and translating Arabic as part of the creation of a new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software system designed to produce OCR output for Arabic texts. His written evaluation of the system is being used by the software developers to make improvements. Nachy has become an integral part of the Electronic Collections Department and his colleagues nominated him for this award in recognition of his unusual dedication and the high degree of effort he puts into ensuring that his work is accurate and accomplished by necessary deadlines. He also is commended for seeking process improvements, for his remarkable natural diplomacy both in the workplace and in his interaction with some of the international partners on the OACIS grant, and for his consistent contributions to both the department's efficiency and morale. Nachy is an exceptional student employee who exemplifies several of the criteria for this Service Quality Improvement Award.

Scott Libson, Manuscript and Archives

Scott Libson, a masters degree candidate in Religious Studies, has worked for three years in Manuscripts and Archives. Scott's processing work has resulted in making more than a dozen collections accessible and more usable to researchers, including the papers of Dean Acheson, William Sloane Coffin, and Paul Bass, as well as the Kramer Initiative Collections. Furthermore, he has made significant contributions to the finding aid conversion project by personally re-keying at least 200 finding aids to make them available online where they are both searchable and available to researchers off-site. Having become fluent in the department's policies and procedures, Scott has participated extensively with archivists in the implementation and testing of new processing procedures that greatly reduce the amount of time spent processing standard collections; these innovations have been recognized nationally in a presentation at the Society of American Archivists annual meeting and in a forthcoming publication. When Scott graduates in May he will leave behind a legacy of exceptional service to Manuscripts and Archives which we recognize today by presenting him this Service Quality Improvement Award.

One Team is honored this year:

Debra Bush and Stephen Naron work as a team in the Fortunoff Video
Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

Debra Bush and Stephen Naron worked as a team in the Fortunof Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies to reformat endangered videotapes as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities preservation grant project. As part of this project, the team tested a robotic System for the Automatic Migration of Media Archives (known as SAMMA). This project was completed due to the enormous effort, excellent planning, and intelligent analysis of these team members. The moving image archive community will look to the Fortunoff Video Archive as the model for future projects using this technology. This Award is presented to Debra and Stephen for their exceptional handling of the challenging and high-impact implementation of this innovative system, and their improvements to procedures that have resulted in significant improvements in productivity in the department.

Six Awards are presented to individuals:

Alice Prochaska, University Librarian, congratulates Monte Bailey from the Social Science
Library on his award

Monte Bailey is honored today for his significant contributions to both improving the quality of procedures in his workplace and the morale of his co-workers. During the past year Monte has participated in a project to survey usage of journals at the Social Science Library to determine which journals could be sent to the Library Shelving Facility. He has also initiated a systematic re-labeling and a bar-coding project for LC classed items in the Social Science Library. Through his initiatives these projects have led to a more accurate understanding and organization of the holdings and better service to researchers and students. His work alongside the library's student shelvers has resulted in a demonstrable increase in their productivity and pride in their understanding of how their jobs fit into the work of the entire library. Monte's energetic spirit and innovative procedures have resulted in significant cooperation and productivity among his co-workers.

Taking a moment to pose for the photographer is Gail Barnett from the Academic
Media and Technology Department

Gail Barnett is honored for handling in an exceptional manner the unusual installation of the new Voyager release this past year which has high-impact and important consequences for teaching, research and services at Yale. Orbis, upon which we all depend, is administered, managed, and protected by Gail every day, frequently every night and weekend. She ensures that indexes are regenerated, fixes installed, and clean-up operations run without interrupting service. She causes hundreds of thousands of records to be loaded to Orbis each year, she supports every new Orbis-related project implementation, and she ensures that daily operations and batch jobs run without a hitch. When something fails in the night, it is most frequently Gail who gets the midnight call. However, Gail's recent work this past year upgrading Orbis to Voyager Unicode and Release 5 deserves special recognition. While the rest of the YUL staff was enjoying the winter holiday recess, Gail was spending those days and many long nights working with Endeavor to complete the upgrade. All library staff, Yale faculty and students, and Orbis users throughout the world benefit from Gail's dedication.

Mary Caldera, first chair of the Communications Committee,
listens to the Service Quality Award citation

As the first chair of the Communications Committee, Mary Caldera helped to pave the way for reinforcing one of the library's key values: two-way and open communication. Some of the major initiatives completed during her chairmanship include: guidelines for a committee participation brochure; a Committee Fair; a staff communication guide; guidelines for committees; a committee directory; and development of the communications committee website. This award recognizes Mary Caldera's exceptional manner of handling the challenges of fostering these changes, her talent in leading the committee to these achievements, the combined impact of which result in the improved wellness of the library workplace.

Looking over her award from Alice Prochaska, University Librarian, is Geraldine
Hardy, Preparations Unit/Acquisitions Department

Geraldine Hardy is the lead person in the Preparations Unit/Acquisitions Department. She eagerly assists the manager in developing work routines that improve the quality and quantity of work and this year is especially recognized for her development of workflows to implement new procedures for the processing of non-book media such as CDs, DVDs, and microfilms. Gerry is a highly effective trainer and maintains firsthand knowledge of the workflow though daily participation in production. In addition, her overall accomplishments consistently demonstrate a high level of dedication, conscientiousness, and compassion which have contributed significantly to the productivity of the Unit and to improving staff morale. For these contributions to the Library, we are pleased to present Gerry with one of this year's Service Quality Improvement Awards.

Christine Weideman, Chair of the Performance Appraisal System Committee
is being congratulated by by University Librarian Alice Prochaska

The next Service Quality Improvement Award is presented to Christine Weideman for her outstanding leadership that brought the high-impact work of the Performance Appraisal System Committee to a successful conclusion this past year. As Chair of PASC, Chris kept the group focused and on track to meet the ambitious time frame proposed to the design and implementation a performance appraisal system for all levels of staff in the Yale University Library. She made communication a high priority and led multiple sessions throughout the libraries to keep staff informed of progress and to solicit their feedback, and also made herself available for meetings with departments and individuals. She practiced careful listening, maintaining sensitive feedback in strict confidence, but also shared such input in ways that the committee was able to make appropriate revisions. Illustrative of her strong commitment to collaborative and team work, Chris agreed to accept this award only if the fine work of the Committee was publicly recognized. She argues that her contribution to the Library's quality improvement in this area was made possible by committee members' dedication and hard work. The committee did a stellar job and the results of their efforts, under Chris' exceptional leadership are having, and will continue to have, a long-range impact throughout the Library.

University Librarian Alice Prochaska cites Cesar Zapata's
accomplishments

Cesar Zapata, as the Access and Collections Coordinator in the Law Library, is a powerhouse of energy, always willing to be of service. This award recognizes Cesar's truly outstanding overall accomplishments that regularly demonstrate his high level of dedication, responsiveness, concern for the welfare of others, and conscientiousness, as well as his consistently applied "can- do" attitude. Whether managing the stacks, improving the security operation, reducing the cost of signage, or removing a dead fish from the Law Library's aquarium, Cesar handles all challenges in an exceptional manner. In the words of one nominator, "Cesar is Mr. Service Quality," and the Committee easily concluded that he should wear the Service Quality Improvement Award pin to publicly display this distinction.

Other photos from the ceremony:

Over 75 people attended the Sixth Annual Service Quality Improvement Awards ceremony

Taking time to congratulate Nahaliel Kanfer on his award are his co-workers
from Electronic Collections: Left to right, Kimberly Parker,
Jennifer Weintraub, and Diana Quinones

Delicious array of delicacies for the recipients and their co-workers

Enjoying the goodies and refreshments are: left to right Susan Tucker, Acquisitions,
Diane Kaplan, Manuscripts & Archives, Bernadette Cioffi, Libray Human Resources,
and Cindy Ostroff, Manuscript & Archives

Geraldine Dickel, Catalog/Hebraica team and Majda Deeb, Near East Collection
take a few minutes to chat after the ceremony

Taking time out to pose for the camera are : left to right Sharon Forbes, Catalog Team
and Sharlee Moore, Binding Department

Photographs taken by:
Carl Kaufman, Media Services

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Last modified April 11, 2006
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