Rockland Trust has donated $50,000.00 to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The donation will sponsor the creation of the Rockland Trust Cyber Café in the expanded Claire T. Carney Library on campus.

The Claire T. Carney Library project, slated to open in the Fall of 2010, will contain, in addition to the library collections of books, periodicals and other information, a lecture venue for guests speakers and University receptions, a campus gallery and the Rockland Trust Cyber Café–a technology equipped campus meeting spot. The expanded library space will benefit not only the University’s student population but the greater Dartmouth-SouthCoast community as well. –> More…

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
7:00-8:30 p.m.
Library Browsing Area

The Claire T. Carney Library Associates 2008 Annual Meeting and election of Officers

Speaker: Library Dean, Dr. Sharon Weiner “The Symbolic Value of the Library”

Reception to follow the program.

The annual meeting is free and open to the public.

Each year at the Honors Convocation the library presents Student Library Employee Academic Achievement Awards to the five student library workers with the highest cumulative grade point averages. In order to be eligible the student worker must be an undergraduate (any year) with a minimum GPA of 3.2.
The winners of the Student Library Employee Academic Achievement Awards for 2007-2008 are:

Samantha Cardone, English major, works in Archives
Rochelle Fontaine, Graphic Design major, works in Circulation
Kayla Logan, CVPA Art Education major, works in Interlibrary Loan
Rosannette Rivera, Art Education major, works in Circulation
Gabrielle Streeter, Music major, works in Interlibrary Loan

They will each receive a gift certificate from Baker Books at the Honors Convocation on Wednesday May 7th. The awards will be presented by Library Dean Sharon Weiner.

- as reported by Mary Adams, library coordinator for the Student Library Employee Academic Achievement Awards.

Heirloom Discovery Day is a UMass Dartmouth Claire T. Carney Library Associates fundraiser.

Details:
Heirloom Discovery Day
March 30, 2 - 4:30
Library Browsing area
Claire T. Carney Library
Parking available in lot 13
Light refreshments will be available.

The Claire T. Carney Library Associates are hosting an Heirloom Discovery Day at UMass Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth, MA.

The event will be Sunday, March 30 at 2-4:30 p.m. in the Claire T. Carney library browsing area.

Senior appraiser Francis H. McNamee of the Marion Antique Shop and Paula Dean, who appraises jewelry and collectibles, will be featured.

• Each appraisal will be $5 payable at the door.
• There is a three item limit.
• Bring portable items and photographs of items that are too heavy to carry in.
• Do not bring coins, books or stamps.

For more information contact Rita Raymond at 508.995.3528.

The Library is offering sessions to help beginners and advanced users. All sessions will meet in the Library’s second floor conference room (just behind the elevator). Each session can have 6 participants, so RSVP quickly to get a spot!

• FILLED - April 4 2:30 – 3:30 Beginner
• It was great!- April 11 12-1PM Advanced; 2-3PM Beginner
• Completed!- April 18 2-3 Advanced
• Sign Up Now!- April 25 2:30 – 3:30 Beginner
• May 2 2:30-3:30 Advanced
• May 9: 2:30 – 3:30 Beginner

RefWorks allows you to create your own database of references. You may then use those references in a bibliography or you may cite references in your paper and RefWorks will format your paper and bibliography in any style that you choose.

Beginners will learn:

• How to open an account
• Basic citation importation
• How to create and organize folders in your account
• How to link to your paper in MSWord
• How to create a basic bibliography

Advanced sessions will focus on:

• Importing from other sources (web pages, RSS feeds, and other commercial databases)
• Editing references
• More viewing and sorting options
• Checking for duplicates
• Troubleshooting problems

Please RSVP for a session by contacting Kari Mofford at kmofford@umassd.edu
If you have a laptop with wireless access, please bring it!

The Claire T. Carney Library is currently featuring an exhibit of 15 art books created by students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Participating students completed the course on bookmaking, known as the Art of the Book, taught in the fall semester by Design Professor and CVPA Assistant Dean, Janine Wong. The purpose of the course is to explore “the possibilities inherent in the book’s function as a repository of ideas and a form for expression.”

Students study historical books and develop new forms by creating a variety of book structures, both traditional and contemporary. Students explore structure and content of the book form and are introduced to print process and technologies as well as
decorative papers.

Each book features original haiku by John P. Landry. Landry serves on the staff of the English department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In April 2007 he was named the official Poet Laureate for the city of New Bedford by Mayor Scott W. Lang. The Poet Laureate’s official duties for the city are to compose and read poetry at various venues and special events within New Bedford.

The exhibit is located in the glass display cases on the first floor of the library. The following students participated: Victor Morse, Matt Sullivan, Danielle Lavoie, Gianna Abbondanza, Amy Williams, Nick Carey, Stacey Sarber, Sadira Rashidi, Amy McGillicuddy, Savanna Ferreira, Christina Martins, Jennifer Soares, Beth Enko, Lisel Dexheimer, and Erin LaPlante.

In collaboration with Claire T. Carney Library, Dartmouth Public Libraries produced an informative guide to the April 1st town elections. The guide provides access to YouTube interviews with candidates for Select Board, candidate-written editorials, key ballot questions, and essential voter information on topics such as registering to vote and voting locations.

A major professional publication, Library Journal, wrote “it’s one of the finer pages I’ve seen in my ongoing survey of public libraries’ election-education initiatives: easily accessible, simply organized and straightforwardly designed, seriously informative…”

We encourage town residents to be civically engaged and to make informed voting decisions. The library’s “Smart Voting Begins at the Library” guide will certainly help residents achieve this goal.

Update from the NIH Office of Extramural Research to the external biomedical research community.

from the Nexus Special Edition on Peer Review: March 5, 2008

The NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni is mulling the final draft of the “NIH 2007-2008 Peer Review Self-Study” submitted Feb. 28, 2008, marking the end of the diagnostic phase of the peer review enhancement effort. The public comment period is open through Monday, March 17, 2008. To access the full report and for details on submitting comments please visit the Enhancing Peer Review at NIH Web site.

Last year, Dr. Zerhouni established two working groups (the Advisory Committee to the Director and the NIH Steering Committee) to examine the peer review system NIH uses to support biomedical and behavioral research. The groups were charged with identifying the most significant challenges and proposing recommendations that would enhance this system in the most transformative manner. During the summer and fall of 2007, both working groups embarked on an in-depth evaluation of peer review that included soliciting input from NIH internal and external communities and extensively deliberating about challenges and recommendations.

The final report reflects the outcome of the diagnostic phase and includes the working groups’ recommendations to the most significant challenges facing the peer review system (details of implementation were purposefully omitted during this phase of the project). Dr. Zerhouni will carefully consider the recommendations and work with the Steering Committee Peer Review Implementation Group to develop an implementation plan. NIH will formally announce the new initiatives it plans to implement in the spring of 2008.

For brief summary and recommendations see: Nexus Special Edition on Peer Review: March 5, 2008
(http://grants.nih.gov/grants/partners/0308Nexus.htm#ExtramuralNexus )

For FULL report see: Enhancing Peer Review at NIH
( http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/ )

Beginning March 24, LSIRT (Library Services, Information Resources and Technology) will implement a “print solution” to reduce paper waste. Anyone printing from the Carney Library’s second-floor computers and those in CITS labs in the lower level and LARTS 216 will use a nearby print station to release a document for print.

Staff and information will be available to help students with the new process.

A print solution to reduce paper waste is necessary as UMass Dartmouth strives to be more environmentally conscious. Currently, printer areas in the Carney Library and the CITS labs generate an average of 800 sheets of waste paper every day: items printed but never picked up. That figure translates to 5600 sheets of waste paper per week and 179,200 sheets per academic year (32 weeks).

We believe that the new printing system will help people to be more aware of the documents they send to the printer.

We appreciate your cooperation as we try to reduce paper waste and improve our impact on the environment.

- Donna Massano, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, CITS
- Sharon Weiner, Dean of Library Services, Claire T. Carney Library

The Final Report of the UMass Dartmouth Learning Commons Planning Committee has been released. The committee was formed in the Fall of 2007 with three co-chairs Magali Carrera (Professor of Art History), Donna Massano (CITS), and Sharon Weiner (Library). The committee was given the following charge:

“The UMass Dartmouth Learning Commons (LC) Planning Committee will develop plans for the services, technology, resources, and space for the LC on the first and second floors of the Claire T. Carney Library. The LC will be an interdisciplinary collaborative learning space that will provide seamless access to resources, technology, and people to support teaching, learning, and research. The LC will advance the University mission to be “actively engaged in personalized teaching and innovative research” and will help to fulfill the University’s vision of “providing a personalized academic environment where the scholarly research and creative activities of faculty and graduate students are interwoven with the undergraduate experience.” It will also advance the vision of providing “enhanced technological capabilities for the delivery of our educational and outreach programs.” As an integrated environment that fosters engagement, collaboration, and discovery, the LC will meet the changing and emerging needs of teaching, learning, and scholarship at UMass Dartmouth.”

The next phase of planning will be the formation of three new teams: LC Management Team, Transition Team, and Implementation Team.

See the UMass Dartmouth Learning Commons Planning Committee Final Report for full details.