April 1996

LAUNC-CH Newsletter April 1996 Issue: 139

1996 LAUNC-CH Conference

Letter to Chancellor Hooker

Upcoming Programs...

Member News/Library News

Live From the Internet

1996 LAUNC-CH Conference: "Library Collections in the 21st Century"

    Participants at this year's LAUNC-CH Conference came away from the meeting more informed and, perhaps, less apprehensive about the prospects of developing collections for 21st-century libraries. Nearly 140 registrants from across central North Carolina converged on the Friday Center on March 25th for a day packed with practical and thought-provoking programs. Keynote speaker Ralph Ferragamo, CEO of Softline, Inc., producers of full-text CD-ROM databases such as Ethnic NewsWatch, challenged libraries to think more like businesses, actively marketing our services and products to our constituencies or risk losing them to the draw of home-based online service providers. He encouraged libraries to work with publishers to develop high-quality products which provide access to unique, local collections.
    Five workshops presented in the morning and afternoon wove together nicely around the day's theme. Conference attendees had the opportunity to learn more about the selection and evaluation of resources in electronc formats; the TRLN Document Delivery Project; creating electronic texts in libraries; the preservation of traditional, digital, and "virtual" collections; and diversity in Special Collection development. We also heard thought-provoking presentations by members of a panel around the topic of enhancing the relationships between users, selectors and vendors of library materials. Prof. Jim Leloudis, Dr. Pat Dominguez and Bob Nardini addressed the dramatic changes in the nature and quantity of library materials available now as opposed to just ten years ago, emphasizing that we can no longer function in relative isolation; it is essential that we develop partnerships with one another.
    Anyone interested in the handouts or presentations (where available) of a particular session from the conference may access them via the LAUNC-CH web page at http://www.unc.edu/lib/launcch/archives/conf.htm. The handouts will be put on the page as soon as we receive them from the speakers.
    If you did not fill out the evaluation form, it's not too late! Please fill out and return to Ron Bartholomew at CB#3942. Contact Ron if you need an evaluation form.
    This year's was the latest in a long line of successful LAUNC-CH conferences. We look forward to an equally exciting conference next year!

--Diane Pettit

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Letter to Chancellor Hooker

Every year the Professional Welfare Commmittee of LAUNC-CH sends a letter to the Chancellor concerning salaries of librarians at UNC-CH and how they compare in rank with their peer groups. Below is the letter sent to Chancellor Hooker on behalf of all librarians.

21 February 1996

Chancellor Michael Hooker
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
103 South Building, CB# 9100

Dear Chancellor Hooker:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Executive Board of the Librarians' Association at UNC-CH to share the results of the Association of Research Libraries' (ARL) Annual Salary Survey. As you are aware, ARL is comprised of the largest research libraries in the United States and Canada. Among the 108 institutions surveyed for fiscal year 1995-96, the Academic Affairs Library ranked as follows: (1) for average salaries of professional librarians, UNC ranked 85th (down five positions from 1994-95); (2) for median salaries of professional librarians, UNC ranked 80th (down three positions from 1994-95); (3) for salaries of beginning professional librarians, UNC ranked 49th (down three positions from 1994-95). Salaries for the Law and Health Affairs Libraries are not reflected in the above rankings, though they rank similarly with their respective peer groups. SPA librarians on campus are also not included in these ranking and if they were the rankings would be lower.

In order to place the Academic Affairs rankings in a comparative perspective, it might be noted that the average annual salary of a professional librarian at Carolina is almost $6,000 less than the average salary at Duke, which is ranked 27th for a second year. To place UNC-CH within the context of public university peers, the University of Massachusetts ranked 20th for annual salary (approximately $8,000 a year greater than Carolina), the University of Michigan ranked 26th ($6000 greater), and the University of Virginia ranked 47th ($4,000 greater).

We certainly appreciate the efforts of your administration and of the Library directors on our behalf. We are distressed, however, to see the UNC-CH librarians have once again lost ground among our peer institutions. As the UNC-CH administration works to realize competitive faculty salaries, we hope that those efforts will extend to the librarians. We too hope to attract, retain, and adequately compensate the active, qualified professionals who help to make Carolina the quality institution it has long been. If you wish to study this report, we would be happy to share copies of the ARL Salary Survey with your office. As always, we look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Libby Chenault
Professional Welfare
Committee Chair

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Upcoming Programs...

Putting the Library in the Spotlight: What is Your Role? will be the focus of a presentation sponsored by the Library Publicity and Staff Development Committees of the Academic Affaris Library. The program will be held on Tuesday, May 7th, at 10:00 a.m. in Davis Library, Conference Rooms a, B, and C. Guest Speakers will be Dr. Carol Reuss, Professor, UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and Dr. Jinnie Davis, Assistant Director for Planning and Research, North Carolina State University Libraries. A question and answer session will follow the speakers' remarks and refreshments will be served.

LAUNC-CH Research Fourm will be held in Dey Hall's Toy Lounge on May 16th from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. This year's speakers are Page Life, Davis Library, and Bob Sumner, SILS student. Page will discuss the journals of Sir James Wilson. Bob will discuss the incorporation of relevance feedback in information retrieval.

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Member News/Library News

Davis Library

Pat Mullin and Will Owen attended the DRA User's Group Meeting in St. Louis, March 2-6.

Hsi-Chu Bolick, Frieda Rosenberg, Margaretta Yarborough, Betty Waynick and Rodger Harris attended the North Carolina DRA Users' Group meeting at Elon College on March 21.

Margaretta Yarborough, Page Life, Rodger Harris, Joe Collins and Frieda Rosenberg attended the SOLINET Users' Group meeting held at Meredith College on March 13. Joe Collins and Lucinda Thompson gave a presentation on current PRISM searching costs and a demonstration of Prism Keyword searching.

Health Sciences Library

Phyllis Ruscella attended the fourth annual Conference of UNCG's Teachers Academy and School of Education, held on the UNC Greensboro campus on March 29-30, 1996. The focus this year was on "School/University Partnerships: What Makes Them Work?" and featured the keynote address by Professor Ann Lieberman, of Columbia University, reknowned for her work in the area of teacher preparation and retraining. Carolyn Lipscomb and Carol Jenkins are going to NLM on April 11-12 to give a report on our NLM Education and Training Grant for Health Sciences Librarians. The PI on this project is Dean Barbara Moran, SILS.

Carol Jenkins will be going to Washington on April 12-13 to lobby for the reauthorization of NLM and its outreach programs before Congress, on behalf of Med. Lib. Assoc. and Assoc. of Acdemic Health Sciences Libraries and to Baltimore on March 29 to speak to the Nat. Network of Libraries of Medicine Regional Advisory Council about our NLM subcontract (1992-1994) Information Connection Project, which helped us establish electronic information services in community based teaching sites for medical students and other health prof. students.

Law Library

Carol Nicholson attended the AALL Executive Board Meeting in Chicago, March 1-3. She also attend the NC DRA Users' Group Annual Meeting, and "Records and Information Management for the New Millennia" at the Friday Center.

Terri Saye attended the N.C. SOLINET Users' Group Meeting at Meredith College, and the OCLC Format Integration Phase II workshop at Davis.

Sandra Dyer attended the SOLINET Disaster Preparedness workshop in Charlotte.

Deborah Webster attended to the DRA Users' Group Meeting in St. Louis, March 2-6.

School of Information and Library Science

Elfreda Chatman, Professor, gave the keynote address, "Skirting the academic landscape: Women as scholars, teachers, and academicians," in honor of Women's History Month at Longwood College, Virginia, on March 28. Her article, "The impoverished life world of outsiders," was published in the March issue of JASIS.

Helen Tibbo, Associate Professor, attended the Society of North Carolina Archivists' meeting, Friday, March 15 in Raleigh. Professor Tibbo also hosted the Fridays at the Friday Center workshop, "Records managements for the new milennia," March 22.

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Live From the Internet

More and more libraries are making their online catalogs available via a web browser. Here are some sites to browse:

Iowa Libraries (includes library catalogs of Iowa State University, University of Iowa, and Drake University)
http://silo.lib.iastate.edu/z3950_htmls/z3950db.html

Libweb (A directory of library-based world wide web servers)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb

World Wide Web Displays of Bibliographic Records
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/displays/webproj.htm

Online Catalogs with "Webbed" Interfaces: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/alcuin/wwwed-catalogs-Internet.html

The following libraries provide access via the DRA Web software:

Duke University Libraries
http://www.lib.duke.edu/online_catalog.html

University of Toronto Libraries
http://utcat.library.utoronto.ca:8002/MARION

Fermilab National Laboratory Library
http://fnlib.fnal.gov/MARION

Cleveland Public Library
http://www-catalog.cpl.org/MARION

Middlebury College
http://myriad.middlebury.edu/MIDCAT

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Last updated: April 1996