We are delighted to announce the appointment of Cheryl Cook to the position of Head of Acquisitions, beginning July 6, 2009. Cheryl comes to us from the Library of Congress, where she has served since 2005 as Supervisor of the Automated Planning & Liaison Office (APLO), a 22-staff unit which provides information technology support to the Library Services Service Unit. During her tenure in APLO, Cheryl served as acting chief for a year. From 1991-2005, Cheryl served as Library Services Specialist with the LC Cataloging Dsitribution Service, where she was responsible for developing a range of cataloging products including Classification Web. Cheryl will be a familiar face to several in the Library, having worked from 1980 to 1989 as a serials cataloger in Technical Services.

Cheryl holds both Bachelors and Masters degrees in Comparative Literature from UC Riverside (English, Russian, German), as well as a M.B.A. (emphasis in government and nonprofit administration) from San Francisco State University. She is currently enrolled in San Jose State University's Library and Information Science program, where she is completing her third Master's degree.

Cheryl is uniquely poised to help the Library confront ongoing and emerging issues in acquisition management and client services, given her educational background and her broad range of responsibilities in technical services, technology product development, and management functions. Please join us in welcoming her back!

Chuck Eckman, AUL Collections, and Lee Leighton, AUL Technical Services

ACRL has recently published Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University by Char Booth, who serves as the E-Learning Librarian in Doe/Moffitt Instructional Services. Informing Innovation examines Ohio University's efforts to move away from "technolust" and towards a culture of assessment in developing and implementing technology initiatives. Char presents findings from a study at Ohio University investigating the convergence of students and libraries with emerging information, communication, and academic tools. Joan Lippincott calls the book a "must-read" for academic librarians.

The publication is available as a free digital download on the ACRL site at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/

Jennifer Dorner
Doe/Moffitt Instructional Services

Barclay Ogden, head of the Library's Preservation Department, is the recipient of the 2009 Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award. The award, consisting of $1,500 and a citation, recognizes the contribution of a professional preservation specialist who has been active in the field of preservation and/or conservation for library and/or archival materials.

For decades, Barclay has contributed locally, nationally and internationally to the promotion of a wide range of library preservation issues, from library binding to digitization, from disaster preparedness to collection assessment and identifying preservation priorities. He has led and advised on numerous grant projects, ranging from preservation microfilming projects to investigating accelerated aging techniques for polyvinyl acetate adhesive in binding. One of his major contrbutions to the field of preservation has been in disaster planning and assistance. The NEH recognized the California Preservation Program as a model that could be adapted readily to regional disaster planning. To respond to this challenge, Barclay co-created the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service (WESTPAS http://westpas.org ). The service recruits preservation experts throughout the area to serve as trainers and consultants. Thanks to Barclay's leadership and vision, much-needed emergency response training is available in 14 Western states and Pacific territories.

Another major accomplishment is Barclay's work in the development of CALIPR (http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/CALIPR/). Developed in 1991, CALIPR was one of the first automated preservation collection assessment tools for print-based collections, and has been used for years by libraries worldwide. Recently, Barclay initiated the adaptation of CALIPR for use in assessing vast collection of audiovisual materials.

The Banks/Harris Award is given each year by the Preservation and Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of ALA. The award is sponsored by Preservation Technologies, L.P. It will be presented at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. Congratulations, Barclay!

Chuck Eckman, AUL Collections

The Library community was deeply saddened to learn of the sudden death of retired librarian Joe Barker on Sunday, April 5, 2009. Joe headed the Library's Acquisition Department from 1983 to 1995, managing a department with multiple units and 60 career staff. Joe rose to national prominence as one of the premier acquisitions librarians in the country, publishing many articles in professional journals and serving on editorial boards. Joe was a popular speaker and panelist at numerous professional conferences and meetings across the country. In 1996, Joe received the ALA ALCTS Leadership in Library Acquisitions award for his outstanding contributions to the field of acquisitions librarianship.

Changing gears entirely, Joe joined the Teaching Library in 1995, embracing this second phase of his career with equal enthusiasm. His online web searching tutorial www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html was translated into multiple languages and was linked to from over 1100 websites. At one point it was the most heavily used website of its kind in the world. Joe became a recognized expert on web searching; he was a regular instructor at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey, CA., and an instructor at the UC Berkeley Summer Faculty Technology Program. Joe had a significant impact on the professional development of hundreds of Californian librarians through his web searching classes for InfoPeople, a nonprofit federally grant-funded organization affiliated with the California State Library.

During his nearly two years of retirement, Joe savored the time he spent in the company of his beloved husband Peter Raynolds. He was able to pursue his interests in reading, running, cooking, Buddhism, and spending time with good friends. Photos of Joe at his retirement party can be viewed at www.flickr.com/photos/corliss/sets/72157600407184483/   Joe is survived by his husband Peter, his mother Matie Barker, sister Alma Rose, son Liam K. Barker, daughter-in-law Koyoko and granddaughter Liana. No memorial service is currently planned, but memories of Joe may be shared on this InfoPeople blog: www.infoblog.infopeople.org/2009/04/in-memory-of-joe-barker/  Condolence cards may be sent c/o Corliss Lee (clee@library.berkeley.edu) in the Teaching Library, 302 Moffitt; she will forward them to Pete. Donations in Joe's memory may be made to the charity of your choice. A  fuller version of this obituary appears at http://library11.berkeley.edu/clee/joebarker.html

Richard Cándida Smith, Professor of History and Director of Bancroft's Regional Oral History Office, has been awarded a J. William Fulbright Fellowship for spring semester 2010 as Distinguished Chair of American Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janiero. He will be teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses on US intellectual history and the development of US-Latin American cultural/intellectual relations.

Of his research agenda he says: "My research focuses on efforts of the US State Department during the Good Neighbor Program to interest popular Brazilian writers in publishing more frequently in mainstream US magazines. Using archives here in the US, I have already reconstructed the story to develop greater Latin American participation in US media markets from the perspectives of those in the State Department and the US publishing business. While in Brazil, I plan on working in the archives there to learn more about Brazilian writers' expectations, as well as their evaluation of the US publishing business. I'm also going to be looking into some of the more vanguard writers of the 20th century and the connections to the US they developed with small presses. When Latin American literature finally found a large reading public in the US in the 1950s and 60s, it was, ironically, the more underground, avant-garde networks that were responsible rather than more mainstream publications."

In addition, Richard will be assisting the university with the formation of an interdisciplinary American Studies program.

Charles Faulhaber
Director, The Bancroft Library