The agenda for First Lady Silda Spitzer’s “I Live NY” event is now available. The day looks to be very exciting – and a great opportunity to promote ARIA through networking.

The summit will “take a comprehensive look at the economic, cultural, and educational forces that help to create job opportunity, promote entrepreneurship, and develop livable communities” is a perfect venue to talk about the critical role of NYSHEI member libraries. If you are attending, please do not hesitate to talk about NYSHEI and ARIA. We are looking to gain supporters and your help is appreciated.

Please drop me a line if you are attending and want more information, or would be available to meet for a moment.

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Effective September 23, 2007 the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying (NYTSCOL) will cease operations after 26 years.

The functions and responsibilities of the Lobby Commission, as it is known colloquially, will be performed by a new entity, the Commission on Public Integrity. This new commission is formed pursuant to the Public Employees Reform Act of 2007, and will combine the work of the Lobby Commission with the State Ethics Commission.

Those of you who view and track lobbying activity through the NYTSCOL website should be able to do so for while longer.

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New York University’s striking, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, is the flagship of a nine-library, 5.1 million-volume system that supports the nation’s largest private university (http://www.nyu.edu/).The Bobst Library houses more than 3.9 million volumes, 41 thousand journals, and over 5 million microforms; and provides access to thousands of electronic resources both on-site and to the NYU community around the world via the Internet. The Library is visited by more than 6,800 users per day, and circulates almost one million books annually.

Bobst Library (http://library.nyu.edu/) offers three specialized reference centers, 28 miles of open stacks shelving, and approximately 2,000 seats for student study. Bobst’s Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media is one of the world’s largest academic media centers, where students and researchers use more than 95,000 audio and video recordings per year. The Digital Studio offers a constantly evolving, leading-edge resource for faculty and student projects and promotes and supports access to digital resources for teaching, learning, research and arts events.

Bobst Library is also home to significant special collections. The Fales Collection houses one of the finest collections of English and American fiction in the United States, the unique Downtown Collection, documenting the New York literary avante-garde arts scene from the 1970s to the present, and the Food and Cookery Collection, which documents American food history with a focus on New York City. Bobst Library also houses the Tamiment Library, one of the finest collections in the world for scholarly research in labor history, socialism, anarchism, communism, and American radicalism. Tamiment includes the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, the Archives of Irish America, the Center for the Cold War and the U.S., and the Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center.

Beyond Bobst, the library of the renowned Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences focuses on research-level material in mathematics, computer science, and related fields, and the Stephen Chan Library of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts houses the rich collections that support the research and curricular needs of the Institute’s graduate programs in art history and archaeology. The Jack Brause Real Estate Library at the Real Estate Institute is the most comprehensive facility of its kind, designed to meet the information needs of the entire real estate community. Complementing the collections of the Division of Libraries are the Frederick L. Ehrman Medical Library of NYU’s School of Medicine, the Dental Center’s Waldman Memorial Library and the Law Library that serves the programs of the School of Law.

Michael Stoller
NYU

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The member libraries of NYSHEI are a diverse bunch.

To help us all learn more about our colleagues, and give each library a chance to talk about what makes them unique, interesting, innovative or anything else, we begin a series of Library Spotlights.

Any member library can submit a short article about themselves, simply email me at nyshei@nyshei.org. Otherwise I expect a solicitation from me.

Thank you all for your participation and interest.

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W. David Penniman, Ph.D., has been named the new Executive Director of Nylink. He succeeds Mary-Alice Lynch who retired in January 2007 and Kathleen Gundrum, Director of Member Services, who has been serving as Interim Executive Director.

Upon installation as Nylink Director, Dr. Penniman will also take his role as an ex officio member of the NYSHEI Governing Board.

Dr. Penniman most recently held tenured academic appointments as well as administrative positions at the University at Buffalo and the University of Tennessee in the areas of communication and information science. Prior to that, he served as President and CEO of the Council on Library and Information Resources, was a director at AT&T Bell Laboratories in charge of internal information systems including a large automated library network, and was Vice President for Planning and Research at OCLC.

In addition, he has been a consultant to senior management of information services organizations and special libraries in the areas of strategic planning, cost/benefit analysis (including return-on-investment studies), knowledge management support systems, information service design and evaluation (including facilities evaluation), benchmarking and modeling of services and staffing, and quality metrics. He holds a doctorate in communication theory from Ohio State University.

“The Search Committee was keenly aware of how important the selection of the new Executive Director would be to Nylink’s continued success,” commented Julie Cunningham, Chief Librarian, Mina Rees Library, Graduate Center, City University of New York, who served as search committee chair and is also a member of Nylink Council. She added, “As we worked toward picking the finalists, Dr. Penniman’s accomplishments in a variety of academic, library and corporate environments and his vision for developing a sound path to the future clearly identified him as our preferred first choice.”

Ms. Cunningham also acknowledged Kathleen Gundrum’s role during the transition: “As a member of Nylink Council, I would also like to offer my thanks to Kathleen Gundrum who has served so ably as Nylink’s Interim Executive Director during these past eight months. Kathy provided the necessary leadership to not only keep the ship afloat, but to sail Nylink through some rough seas. In the midst of that, she was also an invaluable support to the work of the Nylink Executive Director Search Committee.”

NYSHEI welcomes Dr. Penniman to Nylink and looks forward to working with him.

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As we continue to push for a more robust information infrastructure in New York, it is worth taking a moment to note that the world has more than a few internet black holes.

Reporters without Borders has produced a fine graphic map that illustrates the matter.

In there report there are 15 nations that completely lack internet services, or so thoroughly censor the internet that freedom of information is essentially non-existent.

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Maryruth Glogowski, Associate Vice President for Library and Instructional Technology at Buffalo State College, has been named to the Membership Committee of the NYSHEI Governing Board. Ms. Glogowski joins Michael Stoller of NYU as the only non-Board members to serve on a committee and is the first person to serve on a committee who has never served on the Board.

Glogowski is a recognized leader in information technology since she entered the field in 1975 as a database searcher. She has chaired technology committees at the local, regional, and statewide level. She has published and presented on topics from cluster analysis to staff development and most recently Second Life. She is currently a member of the Nylink Council, an alternate to OCLC Members Council, and the Western New York Library Resources Council Board of Trustees. She served several years on the SUNY Learning Network Advisory Board. She has been active in the SUNY Council of Library Directors since becoming a director in 1994, chairing the SUNY Information Literacy Initiative and serving 2 years as secretary. She established the Buffalo State College Web site in 1995 and was the first campus Webmaster.

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In a move that may serve as an dark portent of the coming state budget process, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno offered a stern criticism to his former budget director Abe Lackman.

Abe Lackman is the President of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. He is also a strong ally of NYSHEI, and was appointed by Bruno to serve on the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education.

Read the account of the New York Daily News.

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Jason Kramer, NYSHEI Executive Director, has been named a member of the NOVELny Steering Committee by State Librarian Janet Welch.

Beginning a three year term, Mr. Kramer will join the other committee members in defining and coordinating policy, planning and responsibility for the various initiatives of the New York Online Virtual Electronic Library pilot project.

“I am very grateful for this opportunity to work on this important project of the New York State Library. This is a project strongly support, and an excellent opportunity to promote NYSHEI collaboration with its partner at the State Library and among its peers throughout the library community,” said Mr. Kramer.

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The Albany Times Union offers a brief profile of John Reid.

Mr. Reid is the current Executive Director of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education, and Manny Rivera’s deputy as Assistant Secretary for Education on the Governor’s staff.

John has also been very supportive of NYSHEI. Not only was he a scheduled panelist at the 2007 NYSHEI annual meeting, but he as also shown conceptual support for our ARIA proposal.

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