By Barbara I. Dewey

We had an incredibly busy week. The Library Development Board met on Friday and I would like to thank all faculty and staff who contributed to an outstanding day for them. John Meier gave a terrific presentation on PAMS. Sue Kellerman and Mike Furlough provided remarks on the library’s preservation and digitization program. Lisa German set the stage for a fun and fascinating tour of Cato II where the Board saw the Access Services operations with Verne Neff; the Inactive Records Center with Jackie Esposito and her staff; and the preservation/conservation operation with Sue Kellerman and Diane Kurtz (wet and dry lab). The Board was very excited to get an in-depth behind the scenes look at these important library operations.

Later the Board and library donors could attend one of three special events – the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award, in the Pennsylvania Center for the Book with Steven Herb; the Heinz and Bridget Henisch Photo History Collection with Bridget Henisch, Sandy Stelts and Meredith Weber; and the student tutors and employees of the Knowledge Commons with Joe Fennewald. The Libraries’ development team – Nicki Hendrix, Marcus Fowler, Chris Brida, Shirley Davis, Karen McCulley, and Roberta Stern did an excellent job organizing and implementing the day and the evening donor reception. I would also like to thank Jack Sulzer and Sandy Confer for their assistance throughout the day. The Libraries have raised $42 million in the For the Future Campaign (our goal was $40 million) so far from our generous donors and we are not done yet!

Also, I attended the ARL Director’s meeting briefly. I’m on two ARL committees this year, Statistics & Assessment and Scholarly Communication. The Statistics & Assessment Committee included discussions on the activities of the program and their strategic alignment, metrics and qualitative indicators regarding the value of special collections, next steps regarding development of a facilities toolkit/inventory, and plans for training new assessment librarians. The Advancing Scholarly Communications Steering Committee discussed several topics including the SHARE (Shared Access Research Ecosystem) initiative, licensing issues, a presentation by Dr. Pamela Samuelson on her work to advance copyright perspectives of academic authors, and a presentation on the Force 11 movement ( www.force11.org ). I had to return to State College for the Library Development Board activities and Nan Butkovitch represented Penn State at the ARL membership meeting. Nan and Patricia Hswe also attended the ARL Fall Forum: Mobilizing the Research Enterprise which focused on SHARE.