PEOPLE and LIBRARY NEWS

Bluffton University

Musselman Library hosted its second annual Celebrate the Library Week, February 9-13, 2015, with programs to showcase student research and creative work.

For a new Bluffton tradition, the week featured a research fair introducing the newest members of our scholarly community and including students from many other courses and levels, each nominated for participation by faculty.  The student research and scholarly activities program highlighted the range of opportunities that are part of the Bluffton experience.  For a change of pace, the five minutes of fame program gave students a five minute opportunity to share a range of projects and creative work, from research to musical composition.

As another way to celebrate student accomplishments, the nutrition and fitness fair was hosted by students from nutrition and personal training classes, continuing a popular event from 2014.  To start the week, there was a faculty lunch in the library, part of our teaching and learning lunch series, with faculty presenters sharing about new courses and use of library resources.   For the Celebrate 2 finale, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we had Blind Date with a Book! – inspired by students and planned with them.    http://libguides.bluffton.edu/celebrate2015  –Mary Jean Johnson

Bowling Green State University

Maureen Shultz began employment in March as a Library Associate for the BGSU Curriculum Resource Center. Maureen had been working at the Defiance County Library
as the Youth Services Associate.

Lindy Smith began employment in February as Reference Archivist in the BGSU Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives.  Lindy had been working as a Research Services Archivist at The Ohio State University.

Gretchen Avery began employment in January as a Library Associate for BGSU Access
Services.  Gretchen was a student employee in Library Teaching &Learning and held a temporary position in LTL as Research and Information Desk Assistant.  –Kari Johnson

 Bryant & Stratton College Cleveland

The Bryant & Stratton College Cleveland campus library, in partnership with the BSC system libraries, is currently participating in an update of the BSC Virtual Library using the LibGuides CMS platform.  This update will make the Virtual Library easier to access from mobile devices and provided additional flexibility for working with library patrons in both embedded and distance environments.  –-Joseph M. Dudley

Oberlin College

Director of Libraries Ray English will retire at the end of June 2015, after 25 years of serving in that position.  English began work at Oberlin as Head of Reference in 1979 and served as Associate Director of Libraries from 1986-1990.  He led the college libraries through a period of enormous change and development, and has been actively engaged in OhioLINK and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortia.  Under his leadership, Oberlin earned the 2002 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries.  English was named ACRL Academic Research Librarian of the Year in 2006 and in 2009 received the Hugh Atkinson Memorial Award that recognizes “an eminent librarian and leader” in the academic library profession.  A summary of his Oberlin career is in Library Perspectives, Fall 2014 http://www.oberlin.edu/library/friends/perspectives/51.pdf.  Associate Director Alan Boyd will serve as the interim Director of Libraries for academic year 2015/16, while a search for a new director is underway.  See Library Perspectives, Spring 2015 (in press). —Alison Ricker

Ohio Library Support Staff Institute

OLSSI: the Ohio Library Support Staff Institute has finalized its class schedule for OLSSI 2015.  It will be up on our website, http://www.OLSSI.org, shortly.  It will be held July 26-28, 2015 at Baldwin-Wallace University near Cleveland, in Berea, Ohio.

We have also determined that OLSSI 2016 will be held July 24-26, 2016 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio.

We also have two upcoming “Online Book Club” meetings:
March 10th – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and
April 16th – As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes.

Both will be held at http://on.fb.me/1iTUmd8   –-Michael Bradshaw

Ohio Library Support Staff Institute 

The Ohio Library Support Staff Institute (OLSSI), a cooperative venture run by library support staff from throughout Ohio’s academic, public, special, and school libraries, has recently been named the 2015 winner of the H.W. Wilson Staff Development Award. The Award will make possible a special track at this year’s Institute for library support staff who have supervisory duties or are thinking of becoming supervisors. Five scholarships will be available to support staff who wish to be part of the supervisory track. For more information: http://swonlibraries.org/events/event_details.asp?id=577135 or contact: Michael.Bradshaw@sc.ohio.gov   –Linda Dobb

OHIONET

It is with mixed emotions that we announce the retirement of Mary Mlynar Conroy on December 31, 2014.

Mary has been with OHIONET for more than 28 years of service, and her dedication to the profession and OHIONET members is a true inspiration for all of us.

Her contributions were integral to the early successes of OHIONET.  Mary began her work with OHIONET as the coordinator of Ohio Public Information Online System (Ohio Pi/PINS), which included a directory of organizations, a legislative database, and a statistics database.  As the landscape of library information services changed, Mary launched into the role of Member Services Coordinator, assisting OHIONET libraries
with OCLC services and the first reference databases for libraries–in both CD-ROM and online formats–and was among  the first consortia-based negotiators
for these services on behalf of libraries.

Mary held other positions during hercareer at OHIONET, including Library Services and Technologies Coordinator and Electronic Resources Coordinator.  She
facilitated member interaction with various User Groups and Advisory Councils.  Mary was likewise active with the Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO), serving on the planning committee for their annual conference, and she has been a life-long member of the Special Library Association (SLA), and served as President and Treasurer of the Central Ohio chapter of the SLA, as well as maintaining membership in the American Library Association (ALA), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Ohio Health Sciences Library Association (OHSLA), and ALAO.

Mary has been devoted in her career to the information needs of academic and special libraries, but she has also been a champion of cross-type library cooperation.  She was among the leaders of the Ohio Council for Library and Information Services (OCLIS), a forerunner of many other cross-type collaborative groups within Ohio.  We owe her a debt of gratitude for those efforts, in particular.

Mary will be keeping in touch via Twitter and Facebook, and she welcomes your continued conversation via e-mail at librarian.mary@gmail.com.

Please join us in celebrating Mary’s accomplishments and honoring the occasion of her retirement from OHIONET.  –-Michael P. Butler

Ohio University-Lancaster

Paul Campbell, Instructional Librarian/Instructional Designer at Ohio University Lancaster has been awarded an Early-Career Librarian Scholarship to attend ACRL’s national conference in Portland, OR.  Campbell has credited attending ACRL
2013 with inspiring an article that he was later able to publish in 2014.  –Judy Carey Nevin

Xavier University

Ken Gibson

Ken Gibson is the Director of Xavier University Library commencing October 1, 2014. He was most recently at Hanover College (IN) as library director.Prior to Hanover, Ken worked in several Health Sciences libraries.  Ken has also had the good fortune to be an elected town council member, serve as a public library Board of Trustee member, and as a president of the executive committee for a multi-institutional academic library consortium.  –Ken Gibson