Claudia Monroe will retire from the Library on June 29th, bringing her highly productive Library career to a close after 24 years. Claudia joined the Library Copy Service, located on the first floor of Doe under the supervision of Charles Jackson, on October 1st, 1985. Nine months later she was moved to Boalt Hall to establish and run a new service point there, which she managed until 1995. At that time, the Library Copy Service was restructured, and Claudia was transferred to the Doe/Moffit Circulation Department's Reserves Processing Unit. The Reserves Processing Unit handled the largest course reserve operation in the Library system, processing between 300 and 400 lists a semester for virtually all undergraduate classes as well as graduate classes in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Claudia quickly mastered the intricacies of her new position, and along with her supervisor Barbara Kizziee and colleague Toni Walker, contributed to a wonderfully efficient team lauded by both students and faculty for its quick turn-around time and friendly service. Claudio also served part-time on the Moffit Circulation Desk under Meredith Fleming and on the Main Service (now Priviledges) Desk under Joyce Ford. In addition, she assisted with various circulation processing functions.

In 1998, we had the great luck to welcome the Course Reserve Unit into the Collections Core Services Division of Technical Services. On top of her work with Course Reserves, Claudia began placing orders on vendor systems and receiving and processing books needed for reserve that the library did not yet own. In the wake of the Library's Severance Incentive Program in 2004 and another move and restructuring of the Course Reserve Unit, Claudia became a valued and productive member of the CCS Ordering Unit under the leadership of Jim Gordon. During this latest phase of her career, Claudia has handled bibliographic checking and ordering for the Latin American, Music, and South/Southeast Asian collections, while continuing to order materials needed for undergraduate course reserves. Claudia also provides much-needed support for Main Stack replacement and out-of-print orders. Finally, Claudia received training in periodicals check-in and subsequently handled the receipt and check-in of US Depository Materials, which are highly difficult and require specialized training.

Although we will deeply miss our beloved and productive colleague, we are happy that Claudia will be able to spend more time with her family and friends, especially her husband Lloyd, who retired from the Department of Integrative Biology last year. A heartfelt thank you from all of your Library and Collections Core Services colleagues for all of your hard work, and we wish you the very best of luck in retirement!

Rebecca Green
Head, Collections Core Services Division

Jim Gordon
Head, Ordering Unit, Collections Core Services Division
Technical Services Department

On June 29th, Fayette Elliott will wind up a long and successful career with UC Berkeley by taking advantage of the Voluntary Separation Option and retiring. Fayette came to the university in 1991 after working in the private sector as an insurance underwriter. After a brief period of temporary work on campus, Fayette was hired as a career staff person when she joined Campus Disbursements in September 1991. In 1992 she moved to a position in the Engineering Department's Office of Research Services, and then joined the staff of the Physics Department two years later. Fayette was hired into Library Business Services in 1999 to reconcile book fund expenditures in INNOPAC against the Campus General Ledger.

In September 2000, a reorganization in the Library Business Services resulted in Fayette's transfer to the Technical Services Department's Collections Core Services Division. The purpose of the transfer was to centralize all INNOPAC fund monitering and management functions in a single unit. Fayette quickly became a valued member of the INNOPAC fund management team. In addition to doing book fund reconciliation, she assisted the Payments Unit with monographic invoice processing and has performed a number of complex special projects involving INNOPAC payment data. In these projects, she tracked patterns and trends in the expenditure of the Library's collections budget. Fayette recieved training in copy cataloging during a rotation within the Technical Services Department. Fayette also helped out part-time in the Earth Sciences Library, providing crucial assistance to the service desk and in technical processing during a critical staffing shortage.

Fayette's many interests will keep her busy and active in retirement. Fayette plans to pursue a career as an independent business woman with many irons in the fire, including direct sales, network marketing, and real estate and property development. She will be able to travel across the country, visit family members and perhaps even relocate. Now is her chance to take that dream cruise and do some international travel as well!

Best of luck in all your pursuits, Fayette, from your Library and Collections Core Service colleagues. Your bright presence and quick wit will be missed by all. Thank you for all of your hard work throughout the years, and especially during your time with Collections Core Services.

Rebecca Green
Head, Collections Core Services Division

Jim Gordon
Head, Ordering Unit, Collections Core Services Division
Technical Services Department 

Fatemah Van Buren, Head of the Earth Sciences/Map Library, will be retiring at the end of June, after serving in various positions at UC Berkeley since 1984. Fatemah has been an active and tireless cartographic and geosciences specialist, and has worked hard in the past several years to greatly increase the size and scope of our digital map collection. She is an active member of the UC Stanford Map Group, and the Western Association of Map Librarians. She has initiated many digital preservation and digital publishing projects, and is always looking for ways to acquire and digitize important maps and materials for our faculty and students. Her expertise in cartographic cataloging has made her a valued member of the UC Map Group as well as beyond UC.

Fatemah is sought after for her expertise by faculty and students, and has developed partnerships with colleagues far and wide. She has provided excellent stewardship of the Earth Sciences/Map Library, and she will be missed by her staff and by colleagues throughout the library. We say farewell to her with great appreciation for her tremendous contributions, and wish her well in her future projects.

We are pleased to announce that Brian Quigley has agreed to serve as the .5 FTW Interim Head Librarian of the Earth Sciences/Map Library beginning in July. Brian, who has served as the Head of the Mathematics Statistics Library since 2007, will continue in that position half-time for the interim. For those of you who have not yet met Brian, he has been at Berkeley since 2000, where he first began his career as the Electronic Outreach Librarian in the Kresge Engineering Library.

Isabel Stirling
AUL and Director, Public Services 

Pati was recently notified that she has been awarded a full scholarship to attend the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Pre-Conference Meeting in June. The 50th Annual RBMS Preconference is entitled "Seas of Change: Navigating the Cultural and Institutional Contexts of Special Collections," and will be held in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Pati Moran has been a student since last fall in the San Jose State University library program, and has taken "Archives and Manuscripts," a class taught by David de Lorenzo of the Bancroft Library.

Jean McKenzie
Head, Kresge Engineering Library

Virginia Shih, the librarian for Southeast Asia, has been awarded a commemorative medal by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Vietnam for her work with the Han Nom special collections held by the National Library of Vietnam. She has been instrumental in organizing an international project to preserve and digitize these rare materials, consisting of about 5,000 volumes of classics, history, philosophy, and literature dating back to the 10th century. The award, presented by Pham The Khang, the National Librarian of Vietnam, is given to the most distinguished librarians of Vietnam, and is usually awarded to librarians only after long years of distinguished service. Virginia received this award at a ceremony in May in Hanoi. See www.nomfoundation.org for more information on the project.

Please join me in congratulating Virginia on this wonderful achievement. 

Allan Urbanic
Head, International and Area Studies
Doe/Moffitt Libraries