May 2006

Volume 47
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In this Issue

New Library Staff

Ronald Ruggiero
Beinecke Library
Security Officer
04/17/2006

Jeffrey Watts
Electronic Collections
Office Assistant
04/24/2006

Evviva Weinraub
Electronic Collections
Librarian
04/27/2006

Jadwiga Biskupska
Acquisitions
Acquisitions Assistant II
05/01/2006

Departures

Bill Elia
Preservation Termination
4/28/2006

Transfers

Thomas Hyry
Manuscript Unit Head
Beinecke Library
5/1/2006

Promotions

Nisa Bakkalbasi
Electronic Collections Librarian
Electronic Collections
4/3/2006

Staff In Focus

Suzanna Lengyel: Forty years at Yale, in changing times!
~Claire Halloran

We are celebrating Suzanna’s forty years at Yale. Her interesting story begins in New York in the late 1950’s, where she earned a library degree from Columbia University. Her early working life was at Union Carbide’s Business Library and at the library of an insurance company. Libraries placed in these unusual settings, were known as “special libraries.”

Without imagining that it would sound very literary or very glamorous in retrospect, in 1963 she moved to Paris. Suzanna and her husband, Peter, a scientist, spent a year in Paris, where he had a fellowship. Suzanna worked in the Library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at its headquarters. The librarian was none other than Billie Salter, who would later come to Yale. Also in Paris, Suzanna met Mary Reynolds who, at that time, was planning to establish the Economic Growth Center Library at Yale. Mary Reynolds spoke with Billie Salter about setting up an economics library that would deal with developing countries. http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/egcdescr.html

After Peter accepted a position at Yale, Suzanna joined the staff of the Economic Growth Center Library in December of 1965. Aware of Fred Kilgour’s pioneering work with computers in the Yale Library, Mary Reynolds became very interested in what computers could do for libraries. She urged Suzanna onward, and brought her into contact with library automation.
A couple of years later, Billie Salter came to Yale, first as Librarian of the Economic Growth Center, then as Librarian of the Social Science Library In 1968, Suzanna joined the Library’s Research and Development Department (subsequently called the Systems Office). The first automation project that Suzanna participated in was MATPS, the Machine Aided Technical Processing System.. This was the Space Age, everywhere, after all! MATPS made it possible to create purchase orders on the computer and to track the exact whereabouts and payment status of books through the various stages of acquisitions and cataloging.

Suzanna’s interest is language, words. A passionate proofreader, “Spelling errors are a personal offense,” she said. On the “Women’s Table” (Maya Lin’s sculpture in front of SML, commemorating the changes in the number of female students at Yale through the years), the “grievous” spelling error that appears is: “Womens’ Table.” Such a thing causes her infinite annoyance. Her soul is involved with the preciousness of human expression. She is not really a computer person as such.

Among meaningful occurrences in her Library career at Yale, Suzanna counts the Service Quality Improvement Award she received in 2000. Although she does not know who recommended her, she feels very positively toward it because the award recommendation described her true calling: helping people who are having difficulty with their computer application. She likes the human connection that it brings.

She keeps her door open and is in her office until 6:30. Often, she helps people who arrive by public elevator on the fifth floor and cannot figure out how to get to the 5-M floor of the stacks.

Suzanna never felt drawn to be a teacher, nor a nurse, but the elements of this job give her great satisfaction. She loves working with young people: “There are skills in life that young people have,” she said with a smile, “like how to make a deposit using the ATM,” which one of her young colleagues helped her to master. Other young colleagues taught her about parking vouchers, Web hoaxes, and her home PC. It seems that people fascinate and delight her as much as words and language and misspelling.

In our New Haven community, Suzanna was instrumental in memorializing the famous Horowitz Brothers fabric store at 760 Chapel Street. Until its recent closing the store was an intimate part of New Haven life for 65 years, since 1939. Thanks to Suzanna and friends, the southwest corner of Chapel Street, close to the store, now carries the memory forward as, “Horowitz Brothers Corner.”

The world concerns her more than novels. Fifty years ago she left Hungary, a country where people’s lives were literally dependent on being informed about current events. To this day, the state of the real world is more important to her than fiction.

Suzanna has two children: one son, and a daughter who has three sons.

A Helping Hand
~by George Stranz

Tom Saul says he’s not handy by any means. But his lack of carpentry skills didn’t stop him from helping two families rebuild their hurricane ravaged homes.

Saul, who works as an Acquisitions Assistant in Sterling Memorial Library, said he felt that he had to do something to help those victimized by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Last October, Saul huddled with some people from his church, the Door of Hope Community Church in Wallingford, and came up with a plan. Seven men, including Saul, decided to spend a week of their time helping out people in Louisiana.
Steve Delmonico, a member of the Door of Hope, had some contacts in North Carolina, who in turn had contacts in the town of Grand Isle, Louisiana, which is 75 miles south of New Orleans.

The people in Grand Isle had located a suitable place for Saul and the others to stay. In this case, the property was a small three-bedroom apartment attached to a church, which happened to be undamaged.

“It was not like we could just pull up to a hotel and stay for a week and help out,” says Saul.

Using their own funds, Saul and the other men purchased supplies and plane tickets. On January 28th, the men left for Grand Isle.

Upon arriving at the airport, Saul noted some scattered damage. As he traveled south from the airport, he noticed that the damage was more evident as he saw numerous tarp-covered buildings, plenty of scattered debris, and even a concrete bridge that was uprooted.

After settling in at the church apartment, Saul and his group decided to locate jobs that could be done in a week’s time. Eventually, they decided to help two households in particular, a single woman named Julie and a single mother named Sandy.

Julie’s house was on 20ft. pilings, but the water was high enough to get into her home and soak her floors. The group did some demolition, threw out damaged furniture, ripped out the hardwood flooring, and laid down the new tile.

“I learned all about tiling,” said Saul.

Sandy’s house, like the first, was also on 20ft. pilings. However, Sandy’s house had a lower level of living space. Water took down the lower level walls. Saul’s group had to replace the supports and the interior and exterior walls.

Saul says, “It was a lot of work.”

The group met their goal and got both jobs done by the end of the week.

Saul says that the elders at his church still keep in contact with the people in Grand Isle.
They have said that there is a lot of work still to be done.

Saul said that he plans to go back again, when he can find the time. He also encourages anyone who has the time to go to Louisiana to help out.

“The problem is that they need skilled labor,” says Saul. “There’s not enough manpower.”

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Library In Focus

Self Checkout is now at SML and CCL!

By Victoria Leigh Gardner
photographs by Cesar Zapata

Are you tired of long lines at the circulation desk? Do you ever find yourself wishing you could check out a book during late night study hours when the circulation desk is not staffed, instead of waiting until the next day?

With the two new Voyager Self Checkout stations that are available and open for business at the SML return desk and at the old CCL guard station, across from the CCL circ desk, you no longer need to wait.

Simply bring your books to one of these stations and follow the instructions on the screen. Swipe your ID (vertically), type in your Last name, press "Next," then scan in all of your books with the barcode scanner. A receipt will print out for each book, which you should place in the back of the book so that the security guard can check it when you exit the building. When you have completed your transaction, be certain to end by pressing "Reset."

If you have trouble checking out an item, or it does not have a barcode, and there is no staff at the desk to help, fill out an orange hold slip (located on the SML circulation desk) to have the book held for you until staff can assist.

Try it today and see how simple and efficient it is!

Event Highlights

New Employee Recognition Ceremony

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 Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall. Each AUL provided a brief description about the new employees who joined their groups.

HR in Focus

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Announcements

New Child Care Service

We are pleased to announce the inauguration of a program to provide in-home, back-up care services for the children of Yale faculty, staff, and students. This program is the realization of one of the child care initiatives outlined in our message to the community in November of 2005 and reflects the invaluable input and advice of the WorkLife Subcommittee on Child Care, which was convened in March.

Effective May 15, 2006, Caregivers On Call, an established provider of back-up child care since 1991, will provide eligible members of the Yale community with up to 40 hours of services per household per year at subsidized rates. These services are intended to assist parents in arranging care for their children when their usual caregivers are not available, e.g., because of center or school closings or caregiver illnesses. Caregivers On Call was selected to provide back-up services because of its nationwide network of caregivers, its depth of experience, and its excellent reputation.

The University will provide substantial subsidies to the program, which will allow Caregivers On Call to offer a sliding scale, hourly rate to parents ranging from $7-15/hour depending upon parents’ Yale affiliation and income. Complete details regarding the program and registration materials will be available in early May at the WorkLife website, www.yale.edu/worklife. For further information, please feel free to contact Yale’s Child Care Coordinator, Susan Abramson, at 203-432-8069 or Worklife@yale.edu.

We would like to thank the members of the WorkLife Subcommittee for their efforts in bringing this program to fruition and all of the members of the Yale community for their continued interest and participation in Yale’s child care and work life initiatives.

Upcoming Events

Yale Holiday Calendar

HR Updates

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"Did you know..."

Haiku

Afternoons in Starr--
Sun through the stained-glass windows:
Blue and gold and green.

- Kathrine Aydelott

Library Shelving Facility

Stacked to soaring heights
Books are plucked from shelves like fruit
Send them quickly now

- Alison Burke

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