The move from North Capitol St. to
Pennsy Dr. is over, and the departments that have moved are almost ready to open! The Preservation Services Department, SILRA, and the Imaging Center are preparing final details for the opening of SISC at Pennsy October 1, 2008.
Please stay tuned for more updates on when you can come and visit! (or at least send and request things)
Doug Dunlop has joined SIL staff as Metadata Librarian. He is originally from Texas and comes to D.C. via Central Florida where he was a cataloger/metadata specialist at University of Central Florida in Orlando. While at UCF, he was instrumental in the work done on the Central Florida Memory project http://www.cfmemory.org/ Doug has two masters: MLS (focus on information organization and digital resources management) and MA (in art history with a focus on 20th century, contemporary, and modern art ) both from University of North Texas. He wrote his thesis on the artist Rebecca Horn and has research interests in: information and technology, spirituality and psychology in art, and pop art and culture.
He arrived July 21st to a new city (Alexandria), new to Smithsonian, and into a new position for SIL! He has already begun to look at the metadata needs of our SI Bibliography, DSpace, CHM’s Caldwell Lighting project, and NASM’s Sheet Music project.
In his spare time, he is an artist/writer working in photography, oil and acrylic paints, and film and digital art.
Doug works in Natural History building, Room 30. Please come by and share your knowledge of the D.C. area.
Amanda Dendor, a graduate of James Madison University, is currently enrolled at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies where she is working toward her MLIS. She began her internship at the National Museum of Air and Space Library on May 27 with NASM librarian, Bill Baxter, who introduced her to the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Aeronautical Sheet Music. A couple of days later, Amanda moved over to a workstation in the Original Catlaoging Section to work on a data entry project, under Lowell Ashley, to provide metadata for the collection based on a card file of bibliographic descriptions. On June 23, Amanda finished inputting data from the cards, creating nearly 900 MARC records in a local data file using a specially developed macro in the OCLC Connexion client. Amanda then moved back to the Ramsey Room in the NASM Library to input further data, working directly from sheet music, that had not been included in the card file. When Amanda concluded her internship on July 10, she had created 1,033 records, constituting a nearly complete inventory of the collection. The Landauer Collection attracts much interest at NASM, and the current Wright Brothers exhibition includes items rotating from the collection and an online exhibition of recorded performances of selected items. This very successful intern project has produced electronic data that will enable much better control the collection and provide the essential metadata component for a future digital collection of the Landauer sheet music.
Polly Khater joined SIL on June 9 as the Serials Cataloging Coordinator. She was formerly Director of Technical Services at George Mason University Libraries and has more than fifteen years of experience in technical services, including serials cataloging and receiving, acquisitions, and electronic journals. Polly's workstation is temporarily located in the Original Cataloging Section in NHB Room 30, and she will be moving to a new office in Room 25 on completion of the remodeling there. Polly is currently working on the project to set up automated check-in records for Freer-Sackler Library periodicals.
Grace Duke is a summer intern in the Information Services Division. Grace is a graduate student at the University of Maryland's Management Information Studies program. This is a sister program to the MLS and she will be taking some library science courses before she completes her degree in Spring 2009. Grace has been helping clean up the Smithsonian Research Bibliography and integrating it more closely with the Digital Repository. She has a background in graphic design and was extremely helpful in creating the image for a poster which will be used at the staff picnic, Congress of Scholars research tent. She will be at SIL until early August so please introduce yourself to her if you see her around.
