December 2004

Volume 33
Back Issues: Past Library Links Articles

In this Issue

New Library Employees

Dorota Peglow
Access Services
Library Service Assistant
11/15/2004

David Lavorgna
Integrated Library Technology Services
C&IS Support Specialist
11/15/2004 

Event Highlights

New Employee Recognition Ceremony (Fall)

The Ceremony and reception was sponsored by LAS and LiSA to honor the new employees that have joined the library this year. The event was held at the Sheffield- Sterling- Strathcona Hall. Each AUL provided a brief description about the new employees who joined their groups.

Staff Members in Focus

Todd Lane
Library Services Assistant
Medical Library

Todd Lane joined the staff of the Yale Library System in 1997 as a casual worker at the Cross Campus Library. After spending a few years in Access Services at Sterling, he accepted the position as Library Services Assistant in the Medical Historical Library in 2003. Todd enjoys the independent nature of his position at the Medical Library as well the opportunity to assist the many scholars and students in their research. This also gives Todd the chance to follow his interest in history.

Todd’s interest in history began in college, completing a B.A. in U.S. History. He also has a M.A.T. Masters in the Art of Teaching from Quinnipiac University and he just finished his M.L.S. in May from Southern Connecticut State University.

This year, Todd became involved in the operating and managing of the bookstore at the Christ Church in New Haven. The collection focuses on Anglican and Catholic literature and the history of the Church of England which indulges Todd’s interest in theology.

Todd has many interesting hobbies including collecting pre-1750 engravings and prints, antiquing, weight-lifting, and reading. He also likes to spend time with his two cats, Shades and Ugly or Uggs for short.

Staff Submissions

Collections Care Raffle Donation

In years past, the Collections Care Program has created blank books in a variety of binding styles as its annual donation to the Library’s holiday raffle to benefit the Columbus House. This year, six staff members shared their skills, knowledge and craft supplies to create small pamphlet-sewn books. Activities such as this one help CCP staff learn and practice skills that apply to their everyday work. They also provide the opportunity to use up scrap materials that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away. In addition, staff members brought in some of their own craft supplies, such as decorated papers, rubber stamps, inks and punching tools. Overall, it was a great way to share our expertise and creativity with each other while benefiting a good cause.

Submitted by Susan Klein and Dawn Mankowski

Ellen Ennever, Sandy Koenen and Laura Johnson decorate their blank books.	From Left to Right: Susan Klein, Sandy Koenen, Laura Johnson, Dawn Mankowski, Ellen Ennever, and Dee Berenda show off their creations.	A close-up of our finished books!

Recipes

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A Message from the University Librarian

Library in Focus

The Arts of the Book Collection at Yale

by Tanya Angell Allen

This upcoming April Fool's Day, Yale students, faculty, staff, and members of the larger New Haven community will gather at Beinecke to eat books.

The Arts of the Book Collection, SCOPA, and the Yale Collection of American Literature will co-sponsor Yale's first participation in the International Festival of the Edible Book. The Festival is a grassroots movement in the artists' community which was initiated in 1999 by Judith A. Hoffberg, the editor of a book arts magazine called Umbrella. Each institution involved in the Festival will host a tea, and festival participants will create books and book-like-objects out of edible materials. Creations from previous festivals include a book of smores called Smore and Peace; another which has candy eggs inside and is titled Great Eggspectations; and many others made out of such materials as, respectively: fried dough, marshmallows, and pea pods. One Yale student interviewed for this article says she is excited about participating but hasn't yet decided whether to make her book out of chocolate or tofu.

Yale's tea will, according to its organizers, "use food as the metaphor through which to express issues from the book arts and literary worlds such as alternate publication methodology, format as method of communication, and the overlap between the literary and book arts worlds." It will also be a forum for generating interest in the book arts and Yale's Art of the Book Collection itself. AOB is one of the least-known but most enchanting collections at the University, and is one of five libraries under the Arts Library umbrella. (The others include the Drama, Classics, and Art and Architecture Libraries, plus the Visual Resources Collection.)

According to the AOB website, the collection contains books on "topics such as binding, book history, illustration, calligraphy, graphic design, paper making and decorative papers, typography and more...." It also houses collections of woodcuts, sketches, and published work by illustrators such as Fritz Kredel and Fritz Eichenberg; the Yale M.F.A. theses in graphic design and photography; and various other special collections. In addition to these, AOB has a working printing press currently used as a teaching-tool to show metal type and the printing process. Rossman and Library Services Assistant Eva Wrightson are also beginning to process Yale's Bookplate Collection, made up of around one million bookplates donated by private collectors.

When asked what her own favorite parts of the general AOB collection are, Jae Rossman talks of the contemporary artist books--the genre which the Edible Book teas are designed to draw attention to. This genre, according to Rossman, shows "that the book can be more than just a container of information," i.e. it can also, for one thing, be a work of art itself. Rossman is especially proud that AOB is able to collect the most current books in the field, and thereby show students that the library is not just about art history but about current art as well. Many of AOB's artist books come from the Women's Studio Workshop, a non-profit organization begun in 1974 by women who wanted to make space for art production available for themselves and others. In the past thirty years the workshop has produced over one hundred and forty books via residency programs and production grants. AOB and the Art and Architecture Library will display a selection of these this upcoming November through January. One of the amusing books in this collection is Your Co-Worker Could Be A Space Alien by two of the workshop's founders, Tana Kellner and Anne E. Kalmbach. Another is On The Line by Kristy Lewis and Linda K. Johnson, which consists of fabric-pieces printed with rumors about famous people in the art world (such as that pop artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauchenberg were lovers) and comes with a clothesline and wooden clothespins. One more to check out is William Haroff's I Pledge, which is a snow globe with the words of the "Pledge of Allegiance" printed in gold on clear pieces of acetate that float around inside.

Another book artist whose work can be found in the general AOB collection is Angela Lorenz. Her latest creation, recently acquired by Yale, is a pair of paper jeans with a book in the back pocket. It's called The Strength of Denham, and is a biography in verse of the poet John Denham. One of Lorenz's other books is called Soap Story: An Artist's Book. It is a story told on pieces of silkscreened linen embedded in six bars of soap. Readers must use the bars to get to the story.

Books like Soap Story bring up the general problem that interactive books poses for librarians: what do libraries do when interactivity destroys the contents of books themselves? To try to help Yale's AOB Collection with this dilemma, Lorenz donated an extra set of soap. Rossman hopes to hold a giant hand-washing event on the steps of Sterling one Spring. People from all over campus will gather to use the soap together and get to the story embedded within. This practical but fun event will be another way to introduce the Yale Community to AOB and the book arts themselves.

Art in the Hallway Exhibit in the Medical Library
By C-C Chuang, M.D.
A special collection of watercolor paintings by artist Zen Chuang (aka C-C). His bold and intricate paintings demonstrate the artist’s attempts to understand and describe the beauties and mysteries of the physical world.
Zen graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and completed a residency at Brown University and presently enjoys a private family medicine practice in Taunton, MA. He continues to paint subjects culled from his journey in life. He also directs a course for medical students at Brown Medical School called Art and Medicine, exploring the role art plays in healing and health for both patients and physicians alike.
Art in the Hallway is located inside the Library along the hallway leading from the Circulation Desk area to the Library rotunda. For more information, go to http://www.med.yale.edu/library/about/exhibits.html#hallway

French Collections at Yale Library Commemorate Napoleon and France at War

Throughout December and January, the Yale University Library will feature its extensive French collections in two exhibits located in Sterling Memorial Library. One exhibit, entitled Napoleon Bonaparte: Legends and Legacies, commemorates the bicentenary of Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of the French on December 2, 1804. It is also scheduled to coincide with an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Yale French Department: Napoleon’s Legacies/Le Sillage de Napoleon: 1804-2004. The display illuminates Napoleon’s contributions to military history and theory, French politics, law and administration; exploration and science; and the arts, literature, and culture. Books and documents drawn from several library collections explore the creation and perpetuation of this legend, as well as the efforts of historians to interpret his manifold legacies.

“The Emperor Napoleon in his lesser
coronation regalia" from Frederic
Masson’s Livre du sacre de l'empereur
Napoleon (Paris, 1908).

Also on display, in an exhibit entitled “France at War” in the Memorabilia Room, are recently acquired First and Second World War French posters from the War Poster Collection in Manuscripts and Archives. The posters from the First World War highlight efforts to raise funds for the war effort, and to recruit troops and mobilize support for them using appeals to familial, rural, and community values and reminders of German aggression. For the Second World War, the posters document the mobilization and recruitment activities, the fall of France and the establishment of the Vichy state, and themes of Vichy ideology and propaganda.

In this advertisement for the fourth bond issue for national defense, a French soldier seizes the
tricolor French flag from the beak of the German eagle.

For more information on this exhibit, contact:

Susanne Roberts
Librarian for European History
Susanne.Roberts@yale.edu

Did You Know?

From the Communications Committee Suggestion Box:
"Can we support professional activities of Clerical and Technical staff beyond the learning plan, such as money and leave for conferences and meetings?"

The feedback we are getting is that this is happening more and more frequently. Many staff members are getting support to attend conferences and meetings, usually as part of their learning plans (but not always limited to the leaning plan funds). Because there is so much flexibility built into the learning plan, individuals and their unit heads can be creative in how the funds are applied.

Satirical Medical Note Cards for Sale in the Medical Library

The Clement C. Fry Collection of Medical Prints is a superb collection of European satirical medical prints from the 18th and 19th centuries given to the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library in 1955.

The note card set contains ten cards with five different British medical prints. Stop by the Circulation Desk in the Library to view the cards and purchase a set to send to your family and friends.

HR in Focus

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Announcements

Managerial Promotion System

As you know, in April of 2004 University Librarian, Alice Prochaska appointed and charged a Committee of managerial and professional staff to design & implement a promotion review system, and performance expectations for library staff in the M&P category that is similar to the one used for promotion of Yale librarians. This review system, and these expectations will be used in reviewing staff who apply for promotion in the next round, which will begin December/January of the 2004/05 academic year. Approximately 70 jobs in the non-librarian category were reviewed. To view the complete work of the committee see:
http://www.library.yale.edu/lhr/mppc/).

The Committee, comprised of librarians, managerial staff and a university HR representative held its first meeting in early May, and regularly thereafter. Additionally, the Committee held five focus group meetings to seek input, and two large group meetings were convened, inviting all M&P staff to participate. The Committee sought suggestions via their website, and posted frequently asked questions and responses. The chairs of the Committee, Susan Burdick and Patricia Thurston met with the Chair of the Performance Appraisal System Committee to seek feedback and input. The Managerial Performance and Promotion Committee has been working for the past several months on this promotion review system and has made and presented its recommendations to the University Librarian and staff.

The Managerial and Professional promotion system in the Yale University Library will be based on review and recommendation by a Managerial and Professional Promotion Review Committee, appointed by the University Librarian, with final decisions rendered by the University Librarian or Law Librarian. Each candidate for promotion, in consultation with his/her immediate supervisor, will prepare a dossier supporting the case for promotion.

Attached is a complete report of the promotion review system and process. You may also find it on-line at the above web-site. The key recommendations are as follows:
--All M&P staff are eligible to participate in this process.
--The salary structure has moved from 12 grades (grades 20-31) to five bands
--The Managerial and Professional Promotion System will replace the job audit process.
--There is not an up-or-out mechanism.
--Salary increases for promotions will range from 7-15%.
--The effective date of the promotions will be September 1, thus separating the promotion review process from the merit increases process.
--Jobs posted after January 1 will be categorized in Bands I-V. The same job titles will continue to be used. We will no longer accept job audit requests after January 1.
--The annual process, including the announcement of the Managerial and Professional Promotion Review Committee’s membership, will start in January 2005.
--The deadline for receiving the “Promotion Review Request Form”, indicating intent to apply for promotion, will be February 1, 2005. The deadline date for receiving the complete promotion dossier in LHR will be April 30, 2005.

Service Quality Improvement Awards

It's time to submit nominations for individuals, students, and teams or groups who have demonstrated excellent service quality improvement and commitment to the Library and University. The Awards Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, February 23, 2005. Please submit your nominations for the time period of October 1, 2003 to December 31, 2004.

Any library staff member can submit nominations and any library staff member can be nominated. Your nominations and statements of support about colleagues' achievements will help us appropriately recognize staff contributing to service quality improvements in individual libraries and library-wide. Nominations should be returned by December 10, 2004 to the attention of Bernadette Cioffi in Library Human Resources.

More information regarding the awards is available at the following link:

http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/SQIC/about.htm

The nomination form is available to print at the following link:

http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/SQIC/nomination_form.pdf

Please don't hesitate to contact any member of the committee if you have any questions or wish to discuss the award process.

2003-2004 Service Quality Improvement Awards Committee

Sharon Forbes
Carol Jones
Diane Kaplan
Janusz Kulakowski
Brian Kupiec (chair)
Bernadette Cioffi (ex-officio)
Danuta Nitecki (sponsor)

Introducing JobX: On-line Student Hiring System

By now most of you are aware that LHR is moving to an on-line hiring system for students effective Spring 2005. JobX, as it’s more commonly referred to, was developed by Foresite Solutions, a company based in Pennsylvania. JobX has been in use by the Yale Student Employment Office (SEO) for over a year now with remarkable results.

There are several key benefits in moving to this system for the Library;

1. Students will be able to apply for Library positions directly from the SEO website. JobX automatically emails students when their preferred jobs become available and allows students to apply for positions online twenty four hours a day. In addition, students will be able to search for jobs by department, wage, hours, category etc.
2. As for hiring supervisors, they will have access to student applications and email tools allow for communication with students in an organized fashion.
3. Employers will be able to fill out and process hiring paperwork on-line. The system also allows employers to verify a student’s employment eligibility.

For more information or training schedule, please contact Sharon Tarascio.

Upcoming Events

Yale Holiday Calendar

Learning Plan Highlights

Learning Plan Spotlight - **Vanessa Hudson-Greene**

Vanessa Hudson-Greene always wanted to take classes, but just could not seem to find the time. The Learning Plan motivated her to actually take them.

It was also helpful that the Learning Center offered classes that she was interested in during work hours. Vanessa said that the Excel 2 course that she attended at the Learning Center was “great” and that she is using the information that she learned in that class on her job. She stated, “Before I used to enter the data into the spreadsheets, now I can create the spreadsheets and run reports.”

Spanish was another interest of hers, and auditing a class gave her the opportunity to start learning the language with a small step. To keep herself and her co-worker motivated, they decided to try the “buddy system” and take the class together. Next semester, Vanessa will be taking a Spanish class for credit. Keep it up, Vanessa!

Achieving the goals on her Learning Plan has had both personal and professional benefits for Vanessa. She said, “Now, I can help the kids with their homework and I feel comfortable doing a project at work because I remember that I learned it in class and have the book to reference.” Vanessa recognizes that taking the initial step can be the most challenging, but she encourages others to go ahead and take the classes that interest them.

If you have a Learning Plan success that you would like to share, contact Shaundolyn Slaughter at 432-1810.

For more information on the Learning Plan go to: http://www.library.yale.edu/training/stod/learningplan.html

Upcoming Training

Email Netiquette

Has the “virtual tone” in an email message ever caused your blood pressure to rise sharply? Have you then spent the next hour fuming or figuring out how to get even with the person who sent it? If you were on the receiving end of your own email messages, what would your reaction be? Face it, we could all use some guidelines to assure that we communicate what is intended, avoid misunderstandings and convey a professional image within and outside the university.

In support of the Library’s desire to develop and improve communication skills, Yale Library has recently updated its Email Netiquette web site, which is located at http://www.library.yale.edu/training/netiquette/index.html. Netiquette, or network etiquette, is the contemporary term for the proper way we communicate and interact with each other using email over the Internet. The site provides helpful guidelines and advice concerning email netiquette for its library staff members. New visitors are always welcome.

The site, developed by Kate Reynolds, Library Human Resources, has proved popular with other institutions and various global organizations outside the library world. In fact, Email Netiquette is listed within the top ten web sites on email etiquette through the Google search engine. When she first heard about this website, Liz Johnson, Library Services Assistant, thought, "What next? Will HR be passing out copies of Emily Post to all staff?" But, according to Liz, the site reads less like a handbook of etiquette, and more like a guidebook. “It tells you of the local customs and language in the country of e-mail, so you can blend in with the natives and not be spotted as a tourist,” declared Liz.

With concerns ranging from privacy, security and freedom of speech, to honesty and confidentiality it is more important than ever to understand and observe general guidelines of netiquette. ”It is actually very important to know when not to send email,” says Mary Jane Kelsey, Associate Law Librarian for Technical Services, Law Library. “We're all so hooked on the convenience that it is sometimes too easy to use email inappropriately. It's really best never to put something in an email that you couldn't live with on a billboard”.

The website complements the Email Etiquette training sessions conducted by Shaundolyn Slaughter for Library staff members. To register for upcoming sessions please visit: http://learn.caim.yale.edu/lcdb/courses_lib/classinfo.asp?CourseID=770

Wellness in Focus

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Holiday Memories

Charlie Greenberg remembers the Swedish traditions from his mother’s side of the family including pickled herring (most Long Island kids would keep at arm’s distance), painted wooden horses and St. Lucia Day. His two very large and rotund great-aunts, Astrid and Signe liked the pickled herring. The “wild” one of the pair was Aunt Signe who lived in The Ansonia Hotel on Broadway in NYC near the Lincoln Center.

Dexter Banks remembers there was always too much food. He just couldn’t eat everything on his plate including turkey, ham, sweet peas, mac & cheese, mustard greens, cranberry sauce and red beans and rice.

Andrew Gray remembers being so annoyed by the dry, dead needles on the Christmas tree as a child that one year, when it came time time to remove the ornaments he ran to his room and put on his Halloween costume -- a medieval knight's full armor.

Rosemary Jones: My cousin, who I am very close to had moved to Florida when we were in our late 20's. Well, the first Christmas he was down there he told the family that he couldn't afford to come home for the holidays, and that he would call on Christmas Day to wish everyone a Happy Holiday.
His parents (my Aunt & Uncle) were upset that he wasn't coming home, but understood his situation.
Little did everyone know...he had contacted me and asked if I would keep a secret. He was indeed coming home and asked that I pick him up at the airport, and asked if he could stay with me on Christmas Eve and surprise everyone on Christmas Day.
Of course I said yes and was ecstatic to be part of his big surprise gift.
On Christmas afternoon he and I drove to his parent's house and I walked in first. A few minutes later the doorbell rang..my aunt answered the door and just about fell over to see her son standing there. It was the best present she and my uncle ever received and a Christmas the entire family will never forget. I'll never forget seeing everyone's face light up when they saw him and how grateful I was that he included me in on the surprise. It really made the meaning of the importance of family at the holidays become a reality.

Humor Now

Something on the light side
The following library-related quotes and jokes are excerpted from "The Laughing Library" section of the Gumdrop Books web site: http://www.gumdropbooks.com/laughlib.htm

Worth Repeating...
To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one.
— Anonymous, Chinese saying

A library book...is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, is their only capital.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up children without surrounding them with books.... Children learn to read being in the presence of books.
— Horace Mann (1796-1859)

Children's books are written for upbringing...but upbringing is a great thing; it decides the fate of the human being.
— Vissarion Grigor'evich Belinskii(1811-1841)

Food for Thought

Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.

A Diplomat is a person who can think twice -
before he says nothing.

What's another word for thesaurus?

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

A young boy refused to do his homework, and his father was trying to convince him to do it.
He said to his son: "When Abe Lincoln was your age, he was studying books by the light of the fireplace."
The son replied: "Well, when Lincoln was your age, he was President!"

A kindergarten teacher asked the children just before she escorted them to the library, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in the Library?"
Annie replied, "Because people are sleeping."

A wise school teacher sends this note to all parents on the first day of school:
"If you promise not to believe everything your child says happens at school, I'll promise not to believe everything he says happens at home."

Wellness Now

As the holidays approach, it can be wise to remember that they can be sources of stress and even anxiety as well as pleasure and delight. Stress.about.com offers some suggestions for avoiding "holiday burnout" and "mall meltdown" at:

http://stress.about.com/od/holidaysurvival/

Indeed, the phenomenon of holiday stress is so widespread that there is an entire Yahoo! directory category devoted to it. See:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Mental_Health/Stress_Management/Holiday_Stress/

This isn't even a purely American phenomenon. One Australian province offers stress tips that are "quality assured by the Victorian government:"

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Holiday_stress?OpenDocument

And there are even tips available for helping your children cope with holiday stress:

http://www.psych.org/news_room/press_releases/03-54helpchildcopeholidaystress120403.pdf

Of course, if all of this talk about stress is just too stressful, ignore all of these and enjoy the holiday season!

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