Volume 6, Issue 5 March 2010Volume 6, Issue 5 March 2010SLIS DESCRIPTORSLIS DESCRIPTORA Publication of ALASCA Publication of ALASC

Welcome to the March 2010 SLIS Descriptor.

In this issue, Ann McGinley takes us inside Yosemite National Park’s Ecological Literature Library and Research Library and describes interning amongst the deer and coyotes. Sarah Naumann details a difficult but eventually successful grant proposal, and how she learned grant writing. Gayle Pellizzer and Abby Dansigertake us on a tour of the Lafayette Library & Learning Center with ALASC, and we end with another installment of Tess McCarthy’s ongoing “Libraries of the Future” comic series.

Happy Spring to you all,

SLIS Descriptor 1 March 2010

SJSU ALASCNewsletter Staff

Sarah Dunne, Editor

ALASC Officers

ChairAbby Dansiger

Co-Chair &Web Coordinator

Susie Quinn

Secretary/ArchivistJamie Renton

Program Coordinator Gayle Pellizzer

TreasurerRowena Weger

Newsletter EditorSarah Dunne

Faculty AdvisorDebbie Faires

The SLIS Descriptor is the bi-monthly newsletter of the San José State University

Student Chapter of the American Library Association

(ALASC)

Submission Guidelines:All members of the

SLIS community are invited to contribute to the

SLIS Descriptor.

Please contact us at: alasc.descriptor@yahoo.com

For editorial guidelines,please visit our website:

http://slisgroups.sjsu.edu/alasc/newsletter.html

Letter from the Editor

Sarah Dunne is enjoying and learning a great deal from her GTU Library internship, and wishes she still had those shoes.

SLIS Descriptor 2 March 2010

Stay Tuned: Call for 2010-2011 ALASC Officers Coming Soon!

Abby Dansiger

The official call for nominations will be going out via SLISadmin in early April, but it is never too early to think about running for an officer position with ALASC, SJSU’s American Library Association Student Chapter. Becoming a part of ALASC is a great way to get to know your peers, improve your leadership skills, and contribute to the SLIS community.

To learn more about a particular officer position, please view our constitution at http://slisgroups.sjsu.edu/alasc/const.html. All ALASC officer duties, except for Treasurer, can be carried out online (the Treasurer must be within commuting distance of San Jose):

1. Chair2. Co-Chair / Web Coordinator3. Newsletter Editor4. Program Coordinator5. Secretary / Archivist6. Treasurer

To nominate yourself for a position, please email a letter of intent to alasc@slis.sjsu.edu. The letter of intent should include a short bio about yourself and why you are running for the position, in 300 words or less. Each candidate’s letter of intent will be included on the ballot.

Nominations will be accepted through Friday, April 16th. Elections will take place via ANGEL from Monday, April 19th – Friday, April 23rd.

We hope you will consider getting involved! If you have any questions, please contact us at alasc@slis.sjsu.edu.

Thank you,Abby DansigerALASC Chair, 2009-2010

Abby Dansiger is enjoying her Advanced Cataloging and Preservation Management classes this semester, as well as helping to plan programs and events with ALASC.

SLIS Descriptor 3 March 2010

979.447 YNP: Volunteering at Yosemite National Park

Ann McGinley

The landscape ecologists of Yosemite National Park are building an EndNote digital library of articles about Yosemite and nearby Devils Postpile National Monument. Between the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters, I volunteered as the Ecological Literature Assistant for this project as a way to solidify what I had just studied in LIBR 202.

I had never used the EndNote®bibliographical software before, and it was a good opportunity for me to become familiar with the program. When I started volunteering on December 10, 2009, the Ecological Literature Library had 5,090 records, but only 338 of them had the articles attached in PDF form. One of the goals, and one of the challenges, was to find and attach the missing articles. EndNote can conduct online full-text searches, but it was not necessarily that simple. There is a lot of computer security at Yosemite; I had to pass both a background check and computer security training to be allowed to use a government computer. There were also strong firewalls that created a few challenges to logging on to UC Melvyl. After that, I discovered that EndNote only found full text for the records that included the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a unique identifier used to locate a digital version of a document, PDF, or image. That presented a problem, because in order to get the full text I needed the DOI, but the only way I knew how to get the DOI was by looking at the full text.

By exploring EndNote’s Help feature, and with help from Yosemite’s data manager, I learned about www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery. On this site, I could submit a citation for a journal article, and I would receive the corresponding DOI. It was a slow and painstaking process; over 4,000 articles needed to be located! While EndNote can search for up to 1,000 full text articles at a time, CrossRef could only handle approximately 15 citations at a time. I did a lot of copying and pasting, and ended up finding and attaching approximately 600 articles.

I had other database management tasks in addition to finding full text articles. For example, my supervisor asked me to make sure that all records for articles about Yosemite contained both Yosemite National Park and YOSE (the NPS acronym for the park) as keywords. I constructed a query to search for “Title contains Yosemite NOT toad; NOT Keyword YOSE.” I found that I had to eliminate the word toad from the search results because there were many, many articles about the decline of amphibian populations, specifically the Yosemite toad. The query produced 133 articles that lacked YOSE as a keyword; in fact, most of those 133 had no keywords at all, so I added them. Other tasks I completed while volunteering as the Ecological Literature Assistant included adding abstracts, finding and fixing errors, and removing duplicates from the database.

SLIS Descriptor 4 March 2010

While at Yosemite, I took advantage of other opportunities. I attended the Superintendant’s Christmas party for employees. I met the Yosemite archivist. I assisted in the RMS library, a tiny departmental library with resources on anthropology, archaeology, wildlife, geology, and history. I attended staff meetings and met many interesting people who said things such as, “When I was in Antarctica…,” and who were concerned about whether gates that keep people out of abandoned mine shafts were bat friendly.

Linda Eade, Librarian, gave me a tour of the Yosemite National Park Research Library. It is a one-room library jammed full of materials about the history of Yosemite, Native Americans, and the Sierra Nevada; natural history; an American alpine collection; rare materials; and a large stuffed owl. She has an annual collections budget of $3,500. The library is open 32-40 hours a week.

Because the library has serious space issues, Ms. Eade is trying to cull the collection. Once she determines that she will not keep a particular book, she adds it to a master list, and then she must offer the items on the list to the other NPS libraries.

Yosemite National Park Research Library

I worked 32 hours a week in exchange for room and board. I lived in Yosemite’s seasonal employee housing in a tiny town called El Portal, population just over 600, located on Highway 140 along the Merced River. In addition to NPS employee housing and administrative offices, El Portal has a school, an expensive gas station, a market, a post office, a community center, a pool, and a public library. Since winter is not the busy season, El Portal was very, very quiet. At night, it was pitch black because there were no streetlights (or stoplights for that matter).

I celebrated New Year’s Eve in El Portal under a blue moon, the first since 2007, and the first to fall on New Year’s Eve for 19 years. When I left the party at the very festive hour of 2:45 am, I saw a huge buck standing right next to the road. I kept a running tally of my deer sightings, which totaled 50, including the mother and baby that spent time on the hillside below my apartment, and the small buck that munched on the grass outside the Resource Management and Science (RMS) office. I also saw two coyotes, a bobcat, an owl, and innumerable grey squirrels.

Ann at Yosemite

SLIS Descriptor 5 March 2010

Ms. Eade uses an abridged version of the Dewey Decimal system and a card catalog. She still types out the cards; in fact, her business card is creatively typed out on a catalog card. The library is open to the public but lends only to NPS staff.

Yosemite’s research library has items one might expect to find at either the park museum or archive. For example, the library houses a black and white photo collection from the 1940s and ‘50s, and an ephemera collection with such items as postcards, brochures, and menus. Fortunately, the park’s assistant archivist splits her time between the archives and the research library.

I found the Ecological Literature Assistant position on www.volunteer.gov/gov. This site allows you to search for volunteer opportunities by keyword, state, city, agency, newest opportunities, and opportunity type (which includes research library opportunities). I submitted an online application, cover letter, resume, transcript, and contact information for three references. I had a telephone interview with a landscape ecologist in November 2009, and we negotiated a time frame that would fit my academic schedule.

Ann McGinley has always loved national parks but became really obsessed when she got a national parks passport. She has visited every national park and monument in the state of New Mexico and most recently visited Pinnacles National Monument outside Hollister, CA.

Spring 2010 is Ann’s second semester in the MLIS program, and she is interested in academic and special libraries. In April, she will begin a new job at the University of New Mexico-Gallup’s Zollinger Library.

I can highly recommend volunteering for Yosemite National Park. The people are fascinating and went out of their way to make me feel included and appreciated. It was an opportunity to see inside a federal organization, and it was an affordable way to get out of town and spend time in an extremely beautiful location.

Do you have an interesting library internship or employment story? An unusual research project or job, or photographs? Share them withyour fellow students! Email us at alasc.descriptor@yahoo.com, or check http://slisgroups.sjsu.edu/alasc/newsletter.html for more information on writing for the Descriptor..

SLIS Descriptor 6 March 2010

ALASC hosted a tour of the Lafayette Library & Learning Center on Saturday, February 20th. The library is part of the Contra Costa County library system and boasts an expanded collection of books and audiovisual materials, 43 public computers, a Technology Lab, separate teen area, Homework Center, Community Meeting Room, and Art & Science Discovery Center. The Lafayette Library & Learning Center is also home to the Glenn Seaborg Learning Consortium, a first-ever collaboration among some of the Bay Area's most prestigious educational and cultural organizations. According to Library School Journal, library planners consider the Lafayette Library & Learning Center a "national model" for libraries of the future.

Our host for the tour was Lafayette Library’s senior community librarian Susan Weaver. Not only is Susan responsible for the library’s day-to-day activities, but she was instrumental in grand-opening the library, as well as securing grants for various library sponsored programs. Because we toured the library when it was closed, Susan was able to showcase the library’s automated book return system, outdoor seating areas, and staff lounge area/ backroom. She also spoke about the unique collaborative relationships that exist between the library, the city of Lafayette, Oakland’s Chabot Space Center, St. Mary's College, JFK University, and UC Berkeley.

Right: Senior Community Library Manager Susan Weaver hosts the ALASC tour

Left: The Lafayette Library & Learning Center’s Technology Lab

ALASC Tours the Lafayette Library & Learning Center

Story: Gayle Pellizzer Photos: Abby Dansiger

SLIS Descriptor 7 March 2010

For the nearly 30 SLIS students who attended the event, it was a wonderful opportunity to see a new public library facility, as well as learn about how libraries can engage in large-scale collaborations with existing academic and cultural organizations. For anyone interested in touring the library on their own, please visit http://www.lafayettelib.com/ for hours, directions and parking information. The library is also accessible from the Lafayette BART station.

Left and above left: Whimsical design touches add to the appeal of the Children’s Area

Left: Fresh flowers in the stacks!

Above: Behind the scenes at the automated book return

Gayle is currently in her final semester in the SLIS program and is looking forward to graduation, attending the SLA conference this summer in New Orleans, and hopefully being able to leave her laptop at home on occasion.

SLIS Descriptor 8 March 2010

When I discovered how much money I could make as a grant writer I was determined to get this skill under my belt. I started out by taking classes at the San Francisco Foundation Center and even offered to write grant proposals free of charge for nonprofit organizations, but nobody took me up on it. I knew that a more formal approach such as a certification program would be beneficial and thought about signing up for one, so when I discovered the grant writing course at SLIS, LIBR 282 taught by Patty Wong, I registered immediately.

In the grant writing course, we focused on writing a grant proposal for a library (or other related organization). I decided to get funding for the adult literacy program that I work for.

In my position as a Library Literacy Instructor I work with students on their literacy needs, including basic computer skills. Although we can always use funding for books and literacy programming materials, I wanted to help the program by funding something more substantial.

Through discussions with my students I found that many of them had never been to a museum. One of them remembered doing an art project when he was little and really loved it. Others expressed interest in creating art projects. I put together a questionnaire which allowed me to find out what they knew about various forms of art, such as Modern, Asian, African, and Latin American. The students also wanted to do hands on art projects that include ceramics, sculpture, and painting.

The Art of Being Patient: Getting My Grant Proposal Funded

Sarah Naumann

The grant proposal was completed by the end of the fall 2008 semester. The next step was to submit it to the funder (a local Foundation) at the end of the term. This didn't happen. To say I was frustrated is an understatement. I wanted to send the proposal out immediately like all of my classmates did. Not only did I want to get funding for my program, but even if I got a rejection letter I could learn from the experience and keep moving forward. But in order to get my boss to sign the cover letter she needed to go over the proposal word for word to see if she approved. We were able to do some editing here and there but due to my boss’s busy schedule, she was not able to work on it continuously. After doing some revising in fits and starts, she would put the proposal aside as other things came up. At one point I thought of giving up. I realized that I had written a grant proposal and had received my grade. I was certain that I could write another grant proposal but really wanted to see the process through.

I decided to do research to find out how cultural literacy could help students with "basic" literacy skills and designed a program called Cultural Arts Literacy. Now that I knew what I wanted to fund, I needed to write the grant proposal for it.

SLIS Descriptor 9 March 2010

During this waiting period, I kept checking in with the foundation to see if they still had funds available. After all, the "financial meltdown" had already started and many banks were closing. This was very worrying to me. What about my program? What about my resume? And more importantly, what about my students, who could benefit from this program?

Just when I was considering giving up, our library director announced the Bay Area Library and Information System (BALIS) Innovation Fund Program and asked if Berkeley READS had anything we would like to submit. With this, we began another set of editing to fit a different funder’s requirements. After my grant proposal had been looked over by a few key people at the library, it was finally approved for submittal.

When I found out a few of weeks later than my grant proposal for Cultural Arts Literacy was funded by BALIS I was ecstatic. Interestingly, notice from BALIS came exactly one year later than my original submittal date. I realized then that being patient was a huge part of the process.

The Cultural Arts Literacy Program is centered on arts activities, targeting Bay Area Museums that exhibit a broad array of art styles, techniques, and cultures. Hands-on arts activities are provided as follow up to complement the museum visits. Learning and literacy are incorporated into all three phases (pre, during, and post) of the museum visit. Learners will also participate in art classes and their art will be displayed in the library. In addition, their writings will be published in a book.

When I initially became interested in grant writing, I had no idea I would be studying for my MLIS. Since then I have learned that grant writing skills are an incredibly important tool for someone in the LIS field and with this experience I am well on my way to writing more grant proposals. Patty Wong’s class proved to be excellent preparation, and I highly recommend it.

Sarah Naumann works part time as a Library Literacy Instructor for Berkeley READS Adult & Family Literacy Program at the Berkeley Public Library. She also works part time as a Circulation Assistant for Golden Gate University Library.

Upcoming ALASC EventGrant Writing for Libraries 101: What SLIS Students Need to Know

Coming soon to an Elluminate session near you - ALASC will be hosting an online panel discussion featuring grant writing experts from both SLIS and public libraries. Our guest panelists will provide a basic introduction to grant writing for libraries and suggest tips for getting started and where to locate valuable resources. There will also be an opportunity for interactive Q&A at the conclusion of the presentation.

Further details about the event, including the Elluminate link, will be distributed via SLIS-Admin and our website, http://slisgroups.sjsu.edu/alasc/. Questions? Feel free to email us at alasc@slis.sjsu.edu.

SLIS Descriptor 10 March 2010

Tess McCarthy is still toiling away at her second semester at SJSU's SLIS program. Although she hasn't been blogging, her hair is growing back from chemo. Her next goal is to work on keeping her mascara from not running.

Libraries of the FutureTess McCarthy