Dean’s News

I want to acknowledge that we are in some difficult days trying to make sense of Sabra Statham’s sudden passing. There really are no words, however, I did want to share some tributes we received recently. Dan Cohen of the Digital Public Library of America writes, “The DPLA family was devastated to hear that one of our Community Reps., Sabra Statham, passed away suddenly on Friday. Sabra was a digital project coordinator at Penn State and had joined the Reps program in 2014 as part of the second class. In the last year, she worked enthusiastically to represent DPLA in conversation with local Pennsylvania genealogy groups and in collaboration with her fellow Pennsylvania reps. She was multitalented: in addition to her innovative work in the library, she was an accomplished musician and a scholar of musical modernism. On a personal note, I met Sabra when I visited Penn State last year, and was enormously impressed with her and her many projects. She cared deeply about reaching a broader audience through digital means, and worked on many fronts towards that goal, including through DPLA. Recently Sabra was selected to receive a 2015 DPLA+DLF Cross-Pollinator Grant to attend DPLA Fest 2015. It’s hard for all of us to understand that she won’t be joining us in Indianapolis next month. Our thoughts and prayers are with Sabra’s friends and family.” We also received condolences from John A. Lupton who is president of the Association for Documentary Editing and executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission.

LFO recently passed the Open Access Policy where we asserted that the faculty of Penn State Libraries is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. A news release announcing this was sent out and to date we have received kudos from a number of colleagues at other research libraries including Kent State and Texas A & M. The policy was also featured in Library Journal. Congratulations to all who were involved in developing the policy.

We are beginning onsite interviews for Associate Dean for Technology and Digital Strategies candidates. Please try to attend or view the upcoming forums and participate fully in evaluating these candidates for this critically important position.