Briar Cliff University

Briar Cliff University welcomes Sara Thompson to the library team in July. Sara comes to us from Urbana, Illinois, where she worked as the Visiting Assistant Coordinator at the Asian Educational Media Service Center for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sara earned her MLIS degree from the University of Illinois. In 2009, Sara was selected as an American Library Association Emerging Leader; and an experience Sara highlights from her undergrad years is a semester of study in German and Linguistics, at Eberhard Karls Universiät, in Tübingen, Germany. We are very excited to have her join our team at BCU, in Sioux City, Iowa! Deb Robertson, director of the Bishop Mueller Library at Briar Cliff University, has been selected by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Council of Independent Colleges to attend a workshop in the "Leadership through New Communities of Knowledge" series, titled, “Work Restructuring in the Library.” With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the focus of the workshop is to discuss the principles of library work design and redesign to promote customer service and staff involvement. Through an application process, 21 library directors and/or chief information officers at small to mid-sized private colleges and universities were selected to participate in this discussion -- which will be lead by ACRL’s 2010 Academic/Research Librarian of the Year, Maureen Sullivan.

-Submitted by Debora Robertson

Clarke College

Clarke College will become Clarke University on August 1st of this year. We are moving from ARIEL to ILLiad. ILLiad allows us to better serve our students by providing a much quicker turn-around time for Interlibrary Loan materials and makes it easier to give them electronic access to ILL materials as well. Our library houses the Learning Center and the Writing Center. These two areas will be combining their space and will be together on one side of the library to increase effectiveness and better meet students needs as it will now be a one-stop-shop for students instead of having to send them to two different areas.

-Submitted by Sue Leibold

Cole Library, Cornell College

GetYourGeekOn

On May 5, 2010, Cole Library at Cornell College sponsored an outdoor

event over the lunch hour. Twenty students, staff, and community members

lined the ped mall at tables sharing their geeks -- from deaf culture to

handiwork to collections to reading passions to string theory -- there

was something for everyone. One student built a hovercraft out of

plywood, a shower curtain, a leaf blower and lots of duct tape. Trying

to keep one's balance as the hovercraft "floated" drew the crowds in.

See pictures and videos of the hovercraft on our Library Blog ,

and on Facebook. (see Cole Library's posts from May 6 and May 10)

As the event drew to a close, several students told us what they wanted to

share at next year's GetYourGeekOn!

Cole Team Trivia

Students, staff, faculty and administrators joined together on teams for

a night of questions, challenges and fun earlier this year. This was

organized by the trivia experts in our Center for Teaching and Learning,

and the Library. Everyone had a great time, learned new stuff, ate good

food, and transformed our Quiet Study Floor into a Quiz Show. One of the

team challenges was to sort a cart of books by call number. Every team

needed more than one chance to get it right. Lots of laughs.

-Submitted by Mary Iber

St. Ambrose University

St. Ambrose University Library is saying goodbye and good luck to two great staff members. Nicole Lindstrom will be leaving her position as night time circulation department supervisor to join the team at the University of Iowa Libraries and Syl Rex, after twelve years of service as our night time Reference Librarian, will be retiring! Both will be missed.

Congratulations are in order for Library Director Mary Heinzman, who has taken on additional responsibilities as St. Ambrose University’s Executive Director of Information Resources.

-Submitted by Leslie Ross Ferm

Wilcox Library William Penn University

This summer at Wilcox Library we were able to spruce up two of our rooms. The Quaker Collection received new paint, carpeting, and furnishings. A large group study room that had been used frequently as a classroom was reconfigured to create a more comfortable classroom space with new furnishings and a.v. equipment.

-Submitted by Jennifer Sterling