Charles C. Myers Library, University of Dubuque

Paul Waelchli, Assistant Director for Library Instruction and Public Services, was included in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "The Wired Campus" on July 12. Waelchli posted a curriculum map of fantasy football based on ACRL information literacy standards on his blog Research Quest (researchquest.blogspot.com). Research Quest has had over 9,000 page views since January. Paul Waelchli is also profiled on the ACRL members web site.

Anne Marie Gruber, Reference and Instruction Librarian, and Paul Waelchli presented a paper at the Third Annual Des Moines Area Community College Information Literacy Forum titled "Students: 171, Instruction Sessions: 32, Success: Priceless."

Jonathan Helmke, Assistant Director for Library Systems and Technical Services, and Susan Reiter, Cataloging and Interlibrary Loan Assistant, presented a paper at the Midwest Interlibrary Loan Conference at Loras College last spring titled "Docline & ILLiad Working Together: It's All in the Macros".

Jonathan Helmke and Meryem Ouahbi, Acquisitions Assistant, presented a paper at the Midwest Sirsi/Dynix annual meeting at Loras College titled "JTACQ: A Collection Development Purchasing Agent."

Jonathan Helmke is Vice-Chair of the Iowa OCLC Users Group's Digital Initiatives Section and serves on the IOUG Executive Board.

The University of Dubuque hosted Mary Swander, Iowa poet and Distinguished Professor of English at Iowa State, as part of their Arts Celebration Week in April. Mary Anne Knefel, University Librarian, chaired that Committee.

We have been busy with information literacy. Last year, the librarians taught 384 information literacy sessions. Submitted by Mary Anne Knefel, University Librarian

Hawkeye Community College Library

The Grand Opening of the new WPL@HCC Fiction Collection took place on September 6, 2007. The festivities included a ribbon cutting ceremony and special remarks by HCC Vice President Galen Howsare and Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley. This partnership between the Hawkeye Community College and Waterloo Public Libraries is beneficial for both libraries. The HCC library is able to provide current, popular fiction to our students, and the WPL has a remote presence on the campus located on the south edge of the city. The books in this collection are purchased, cataloged, and processed by WPL, but housed in the HCC Library. WPL library cards are required to check out the items, but HCC library staff are able to issue WPL cards, if needed. Submitted by Judy Mitchell, Reference Librarian

Vogel Library, Wartburg College

Sarah Frye, a new information literacy librarian and recent library school graduate, was an ILA/ACRL scholarship recipient for the recent ILA Conference.

Karen Shostrom Lehmann is serving as Interim College Librarian for the 2007-2008 school year at Wartburg College’s Vogel Library. She has been an Information Literacy Librarian at the college since 2000 and prior to that she was the media specialist at Hampton-Dumont High School.

Alan Mask is our new Systems Librarian. Alan has also been a librarian at Central College and Des Moines University.

Vogel Library has been recognized as “Best of Show” winner in its division of the American Library Association’s Annual Conference contest, Swap n’ Shop 2007: Best of Show competition in Calendars of Events/Newsletters for their collaboration with Pathways to create an Academic Calendar for first-year students. This calendar provided first-year students with important dates, tips, and information about the services that the library and Pathways provided. The calendar was created by information literacy librarian Kimberly Babcock Mashek. The judges received 420+ entries for the competition from across the U.S. and Canada. The award was presented on June 24, at the LAMA Public Relations Swap and Shop at the ALA Annual conference this year in Washington, DC. This is the second “Best of Show” award for the Vogel Library. Last year the library was awarded a “Best of Show” award for their website, which is also designed and updated by Kim Mashek. Submitted by Karen S. Lehmann, Interim College Librarian & Information Literacy Librarian

Loras College

The Loras College Library celebrated its 5th Birthday on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 during Wednesday “Common Time”. We put up a tent out on the lawn where students could get refreshments and prizes; staff could learn about our DVD, popular reading and books on tape/CD collections; and faculty could pick up brochures for their Division that included a picture of their liaison and contact information, a prioritized list of databases for their Division, their acquisitions budget for this year, and the amount their Division spent last year. We had cookies and punch for all, and it was a very successful event.

The Library staff participated in Homecoming this year by creating displays for the honored years of alumni, by giving tours of the Library, and by giving away koozies and sports bottles at the tailgate. While it’s a lot of work, the alumni are very appreciative!

The Library has been doing “Thursdays at the Library” where we serve free coffee for 1 ½ hours in the morning. In the afternoons we serve free lemonade and iced tea in the warmer months and hot chocolate and spiced cider in the colder months. We’ve been doing this for five semesters and it continues to grow in popularity.

This past summer, the Library staff worked on reorganizing the space in the library. After having students use the building for 5 years, we felt we needed to reorganize a bit to move from being a formal living room on campus, to being the family room of campus. We’ve done some simple things like change around the furniture, and created more comfortable “group study” areas in the middle of the stacks. Over the next year, we’ll remove some periodicals shelves and some reference shelves to create more gathering spaces. Submitted by Joyce Meldrem, Loras College Library Director

Dunn Library, Simpson College

We survived our ceiling renovation. See our website for before, during and after photos. When we reopened August 20, we offered a new study room, large screen TV area, more lighted study tables and more soft seating. Submitted by Cynthia (Cyd) M. Dyer, College Librarian/Archivist/Professor.

University of Iowa Libraries

Retirements:
Becky Johnson, former head of the Reference and Library Instruction Department, retired effective September 19, 2007. Johnson accepted a position at the University of Iowa Libraries after graduating from the School of Library Science of the University of Washington in 1970. She served in the various incarnations of the of the Libraries’ Reference Department for 37 years.

Appointments:
Jeremy Brett joined the Special Collections Department as Project Librarian effective October 1, 2007. Brett received his Masters degrees in Library Science and History from the University of Maryland at College Park and has most recently served as Assistant University Archivist for Records at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Gabriel Duque was appointed Residency Program Reference Librarian for the Reference & Library Instruction Department effective July 23, 2007. Duque has an MS in Information Science from SUNY at Albany.

Daniel Gall has been appointed Coordinator of Library Services for Distance Education for the Reference and Library Instruction Department effective July 30, 2007. Gall has an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has most recently served as Reference Librarian for Off-Campus Library Services at Central Michigan University.

Von Yeager joined the Reference & Instruction Department as Reference Librarian on August 6, 2007. Yeager earned his MLS at the University of Pittsburgh.

Exhibits:
In celebration of Halloween, the University of Iowa Libraries unlocked the archives to expose artifacts on grave-robbing, demon conjuring, local hauntings, and other spooky subjects covered in the University’s collection of rare books, manuscripts, and ephemeral publications. Librarians from Special Collections, University Archives, and the Hardin Library for Health Sciences’ John Martin Rare Book Room discussed highlights from their collections at a presentation titled “Ghosts From the Stacks” on October 31st. A corresponding online exhibit of artifacts, including the early 20th century Halloween cartoons of Pulitzer-prize-winning Iowa cartoonist Ding Darling and ghostly cover art from the teen sleuth novels of UI alumna Mildred Wirt Benson, is currently featured on the Iowa Digital Library website.

Submitted by Randy Roeder, Newsletter Committee