Julie Lefevre joined the staff of the IGS Library on March 16, 2009. Julie is uniquely qualified to contribute to the full range of library activities, from web management to digital collections to public services. She comes to IGS from the Internet Archive in San Francisco, where she organized and managed digital library projects, including a book-scanning operation at NRLF. Before becoming a librarian, Julie worked in the high-tech sector as a technical writer and course developer. Please join me in welcoming Julie Lefevre to the Berkeley Library community.

Nick Robinson
IGS Library

The Library welcomes Allan Urbanic to his appointment as Head of Research and Collections for International and Area Studies in the Doe/Moffitt Libraries as of December 1, 2008. Allan has been an integral part of the Berkeley Library community since arriving as Librarian for Slavic and East European Collections in 1986. For the past two years, Allan has also served as the interim department head for International and Area Studies. While we explore our options for supporting Slavic and East European Studies, Allan will continue the selection responsibilities on an interim basis. Allan earned an A.B. in Russian from Boston College, an M.L.S. from Simmons College, and a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Brown University. His office will remain in 438 Doe Library and his email is aurbanic@library. Please join me in congratulating Allan on this new position.

Elizabeth Dupuis
AUL for Educational Initiatives
Director, Doe/Moffitt Libraries

On behalf of LAUC-B, I am pleased to announce that the following librarians achieved promotion to the rank of full Librarian in 2008:

--Jack von Euw
--Susan Gabarino
--Susan Koskinen
--Kathryn Neal
--David Sullivan

I am also pleased to announce that the following Librarians achieved career status in 2008:

--Teresa Mora
--Kathryn Neal
--Jesse Silva
--Teresa Stanton

Congratulations to all! And thanks to the hard-working members of CAPA who made it all possible!

Corliss Lee
LAUC-B Chair, 2008-09

Long-time Technical Services staff member Marilyn Ng is retiring from the Collections Core Services Division's Ordering Unit. Marilyn became a member of the Library's staff on August 20, 1979. She was hired into the Acquisition Department's English Language Order Division and performed a wide range of ordering functions at increasingly responsible levels. In addition to doing both monographic and serial acqusitions in nearly every subject area, Marilyn became the Library's expert in out-of-print searching. For many years she was a valued member of the Photo/Search Division until budget cuts forced a cutback in the O.P. program. Later she headed the CCS Division's Out-of-Print Unit until it too was phased out due to budget constraints.

Marilyn has held the position of CCS Ordering Unit Training Coordinator, and has done many rotations in other units including stints in Serials Payments, Serials Check-In, Serials Cataloging, Monographic Copy Cataloging, the Catalog Information Desk and the Information Gateway. In addition, she has served on multiple Library committees and hiring teams. In 1999, Marilyn co-authored an article about the Photo/Search Division in the journal "Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory." In 1994 and 1995 Marilyn served as Vice-Chair/Chair Elect and Chairperson of the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Out-of-Print Discussion Group.

Marilyn's first priority upon retirement will be resting up for the holiday season! She will be fully occupied with eldercare and various tasks at home, but hopes to find time for crafts projects, classes, and programs of interest. We will sorely miss Marilyn's bright presence and dedicated work in the Collections Core Services Division. Thank you Marilyn for your many years of dedicated service and countless contributions to the Library!

Rebecca Green
Head, Collections Core Services Division
Technical Services Department

"Picture yourself nearly 6000 miles from home in an enormous, over-lit, yet uncrowded convention center. You find yourself surrounded by labyrinthine aisles filled with shiny publications in all the official languages of Spain: Basque, Galician, Catalan, and Spanish. Everything is laid out beautifully to impress. Powerful editorial groups like Alfaguara, Anaya, Oceano, Planeta, Random House-Mondadori occupy the front rows and the others--grouped by either region or publisher type (academic, independent, children's etc.)-- are cached in the back.

Next, figure yourself conversing with the very publishers whose names you've only seen on book covers (or in your library's catalog), chatting about their latest releases, recently signed authors, and how e-books are starting to take hold in a market vehemently opposed to them. Finally, imagine that you only have a mere three days to collect catalogs, scribble down titles and ISBNs. That's a little bit of what it's like to be invited as a 'guest librarian' to Spain's most important book fair, which alternates between Barcelona and Madrid every two years."

Claude Potts, Librarian for Romance Language Collections in Doe/Moffitt Libraries, was one of 12 academic librarians from the U.S. invited this year to attend the 26th annual LIBER book fair. His trip was funded mostly by the America Reads Spanish program--a joint initiative of the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade and the Spanish Association of Publishers Guild--and supplemented with generous support from both UCB's Library Collections and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

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