Assistant Dean of Public Services and Collection Development at River Campus Libraries Susan Gibbons has been chosen to receive the “Mover & Shaker” award by the Library Journal.
“This is very exciting,” Gibbons said. “The Library Journal comes out twice a month, and it is used to keep up in the library world. It is a main news outlet, so this is a pretty big deal.”
Gibbons is described in the article as a bridge builder and is noted for her work in developing UR’s institutional repository, as well as her work using Dspace technology, a program to allow scholars to publicize their work.
Gibbons has also helped to produce UR Research, the outlet where faculty members, researchers and graduate students can publicize their research work.
“Full credit [for bringing this for UR] goes to the provost,” Gibbons said. “We looked into the concept. My job was to find out what it was and did. I thought that everyone could benefit from something like this.”
With the help of an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant, she worked with a team that studied faculty research practices and came up with UR Research as a solution to get scholarly work better known and cited worldwide.
“UR Research is an institute repository, meaning it is a place where researchers can deposit scholarly work,” Gibbons said. “This helps scholars preserve their ideas and put them into published form.”
Gibbons told the magazine that one of her proudest achievements is the development of CoURse Resources, a relational database of major library resources and course offerings that allows librarians to quickly generate a page of links to the best print and electronic library resources for any course.
“[I] enjoyed the challenge of reengineering librarianship in a Google world,” Gibbons said.”
Library Journal is one of the oldest and best-known library publications.
“This is the biggest award that we have received so far,” Gibbons said.
The journal chose 51 individuals for the 2005 award, who will be honored at a luncheon at the American Library Association annual conference in June.
“The work I have done has definately not all been me,” Gibbons said. “All the librarian staff have been involved for many years and they deserve a lot of credit for this award, as well.”
Panel discussion explores
gender, race and ethnicity
The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies held its 12th annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on March 22 to discuss gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality.
Three panels of UR graduate students were featured, each moderated by a professor.
Opening and closing remarks were made by the Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute and Professor of German and Comparative Literature Susan Gustafson.
Gustafson was unable to be reached for comment.
The keynote speaker was Associate Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo Tim Dean. He gave a speech entitled “Breeding Culture: Bare-backing, Bug-chasing, and Gift-giving.”
The event was co-sponsored by many groups including the School of Nursing, the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and the Frederick Douglass Institute of African and African-American Studies.
Reporting by Emily Paret.
