Campus Updates

[amlowe]

Please comment with your campus updates to this thread.

[jenndevito]

Stony Brook University Libraries’ 4th annual Open Access Symposium, Values & Ethics in Open Access, took place on Friday, 26 October 2018. The program included a keynote address by Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, as well as a number of panel discussions and lightning talks.

SBU librarians Jamie Saragossi and Kristen Nyitray were invited speakers at the 23rd Annual Archives Month Conference on Long Island on Friday, 12 October 2018. Jamie, Head of the Health Sciences Library, presented “Dental Instruments Past and Present: The Digital Presentation of a Physical Exhibit” and Kristen, Director of Special Collections and University Archives, presented “Minding the Archive: The Max Fink Papers at Stony Brook University.

Darren Chase, Associate Librarian and Head of Scholarly Communication, and Jennifer DeVito, Associate Librarian and Director of Access & User Services, received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship.

Southampton Library evening & weekend manager Will Blydenburgh accepted a position as the manager of the Shannon Staub Library in the Sarasota County Libraries (FL) system.

Margaret Handle, Technical Services, retired in October after 12 years of service to the University Libraries.

[sarahmorehouse]

Empire State College has a new interim Provost, Meg Benke. The library reports to Lisa D'Adamo-Weinstein, the Dean of the Department of Student Affairs, and Lisa reports to the provost. Signs are good that Meg is a very library-minded provost, since she has already been asking questions about Alma, the Open Access mandate, etc. She's also iniated contact with Carey Hatch on her own, which I consider hopeful.

Enrollments took a bit of a dive, and the college is going to experience budget cuts across the board. Since the library has been operating on a flat budget with adjustment for inflation, the best we can hope for is another year of that. However, Lisa, the Dean we report to, is still pushing for our empty fifth line to be filled. Still no clerical staff.

We have joined the honorable society of SUNY libraries informed by the Office of the State Comptroller that using deposit accounts is Very Naughty Indeed, and we may have to work with the college's procurement specialist for Ebook Central because we spend so much on it.

The library is proportionally heavily represented on the college's Middle States accreditation committee.

On a positive note, the librarians have noticed an uptick in Really Good Reference Questions from both students and faculty, showing that our instruction is reaching people and they're retaining it.

[millerjaACC]

Reference librarian Samantha Berry gave a lightning talk presentation at the Inclusive Libraries Conference, hosted by the Rochester Regional Library Council on October 23. Her topic was "Dismantling Whiteness in Higher Education: Academic Libraries on the Front Lines."

Reference and Instruction Librarian Joyce Miller is serving as co-chair of the Standard III Working Group (Design and Delivery of the Student Learning Experience) for the Middle States Self-study Steering Committee.

[cfishner]

We held our first Library Con on October 16th and it was amazing! We had 390 students attend the event over the 4 hour period, and we are starting the planning for next year.

Instruction session requests are up, and students are using all library services. OER use on campus has also risen, and the overall program being led by the library staff is still gaining momentum.

The library staff joint Halloween costume this year was "Where the Wild Things Are".