SUNCOAST INFORMATION SPECIALISTS
INFO NEWSLETTER
VOL 11, NO. 6
NOVEMBER 1997
EDITOR'S CORNER
by Jackie Jackson
The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page. -- St. Augustine.
People travel for various reasons, vacations, business, visiting friends or relatives, or because they are relocating, and so on. Opportunities to travel do not come along every day so I considered myself very fortunate recently when I received an invitation to travel to Russia and Hungary on library-related business. I accepted with great anticipation, as I really enjoy travelling to other countries, and I have related some of my experiences below.
This is the last newsletter before the holidays, so I send every one seasonal greetings, some quiet time, some good times and, of course, a happy New Year.
DECEMBER MEETING
by Trudie Root
The SIS December meeting will be held on Monday, December 8, at the St. Petersburg Times, located at 490 lst Avenue South in St. Petersburg. The meeting will start with lunch in the cafeteria at 11.30 a.m., at a cost of about $5.00, and will be followed by a tour of the research facility. Their director Cary Kenney recommends that everyone try to arrive a little early as parking is only available on the street. (Trudie says she will be there early to help show everyone to the cafeteria). Take I-275 to Exit 8, turn right (south) on 4th Street North and go down to the Times, which is located on the corner of lst Avenue South and 4th Street South (1st Avenue South is one way going east so you may have to circle the block when parking. This will be a very interesting visit and we hope to see you then.
MINUTES FROM OCTOBER MEETING
by Debbie Factor
Twenty-eight people attended the October 6th SIS meeting which was held at the
Sheraton Grand in Tampa. The session began with a short business meeting at
which Betsy King announced that we had $614.28 in the treasury. There were one
hundred paid members last year, with one member paid through the year 2000.
Expenses were broken down as follows: Newsletter - $107, meetings - $47, office
materials - $93 and bank charges - $57. The St. Petersburg Times generously
picks up newsletter postal expenses.
Thanks go to Lana Bullian who served as President for the 1996-97 year and congratulations are due her for accomplishing three goals: increased membership participation, a permanent address, and a web page and web site. Kudos also went to Shirl Kennedy, who created our web site, and Maria McCaffrey who represented TBLC and gave us a permanent address.
A discussion followed which concerned ways to increase student participation in the group, with suggestions of subsidies being given for occasional meetings. A committee will be formed to bring recommendations to a future meeting. Joyce discussed how to promote our Web page and Betsy mentioned that SIS also has a link on the Suncoast Freenet.
Our next meeting in December will be at the St. Petersburg Times. Details on parking and lunch will follow.
There will be a Conference of the Florida chapter of ACRL in Cocoa Beach on October 17 concerning distance learning.
After a delicious pasta lunch at the Courtyard Cafe the meeting was held in the conference room of the American College of Physician Executives (ACPE) on the 2nd floor of the adjacent building. Susan Quinn, a librarian at ACPE, explained that the organization has been in existence for 21-22 years. It is a professional body whose members are MD’s or DO’s who are interested in becoming managers (medical directors). There are over 13,000 members from countries all over the world.
ACPE provides publications, educational programs, travel arrangements, etc. to these doctors. They also publish bimonthly the Physician Executive Journal of Management for members. ACPE has a staff of 30 with a flat organizational structure. The college in Tampa has no classroom, faculty or students, but provides a seminar series to take the neophyte through all areas of management-- health, law, ethics, medical information, financial decision-making and quality- to certify in medical management. The physicians can earn a masters degree (MMM) by attending three weeks of intensive study at various times during the course of a year at Tulane. The remainder of the year would be spent working on projects and attending seminars.
Librarians are involved in all phases from coordinating desktop publishing, editing, registering participants for meetings, working out finances, creating educational projects, and making hotel arrangements, to coordinating programs. The most important job of the librarian is to serve members by phone- they must know the product and services well.
ACPE’s other librarians, Roxanne Touvrea, Susan Quinn, and Gwen Wolff attended the meeting, answered questions and took us on an informative tour of the offices, ending in the library. We thank them for a very interesting visit.
WEB SITE ADDRESS: http://snoopy.tblc.lib.fl.us/sis/
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
DELEGATION TO RUSSIA AND HUNGARY
by Jackie Jackson
My invitation to be a team member of a delegation of library professionals to
visit libraries in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Budapest, came from the People to
People International Citizen Ambassador Program, a nonprofit organization
founded by President Eisenhower in 1956, and supported by each President since
then. This organization seeks to promote friendly relations, international
understanding and cooperation by means of exchanges between scientific,
professional and technical specialists in such areas as medicine, business,
energy and resource development, education, industrial technology, and so on.
http://www.ambassadors.com/
Our group gathered in New York, where we met for the first time, were given a pre-tour briefing by our tour guide, and then flew to St. Petersburg, Russia for the first set of library visits. There were seven of us: a community college systems administrator from California, a government documents librarian from Washington, D.C., a collection development specialist for a public library system in New Jersey, a documents librarian from Amnesty International, Canada, the owner of a library software company (also from Canada), a Utah representative of Ameritech (a company which installs library systems), and myself - a circulation and bibliographic instruction librarian.
During our visits to the three cities we visited academic, public and technical libraries, two library schools, and an elementary school which had its own web site. We were accompanied by local interpreters and spent between two and three hours at each site, talking with the staff, and viewing the collections and computer systems. The libraries in Russia face tremendous difficulties because of the lack of funding - especially in St. Petersburg - the absence of a central cataloging system such as OCLC, the problems concerning the diversity of languages and the Cyrrilic alphabet, and the task of retrospective cataloging millions of items. Several of the libraries seem to be producing their own automated systems and there appears to be a lack of communication between some of the major libraries.
At our first stop at the St. Petersburg State National Library we were shown materials which included pages constructed from palm leaves, scrolls and rice paper, a page from the Gutenberg Bible of 1456 and an early Koran from 1496, Voltaire’s library collection which was acquired by Catherine the Great, original manuscripts by Diderot, Dumas, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe, also musical scores by Rossini, and much more. This library has been in existence since 1795 and now has over thirty million books including many individual collections, only some of which have been catalog. Only one million items have been entered into their database so far. They receive a copy of each published book, and they produce indexes. Their staff numbers 1,800 and they are open to the public for research. We were not shown any computers, although they said they have around 200 for staff use, and they have started using CD-Roms and the Internet. They had free access to OCLC for three months, for which they were very appreciative.
Our second visit was to the National Technology University, which is one of the oldest and largest technical universities in Russia. They have about fifteen thousand students at the main building and an additional fourteen thousand at affiliated institutions such as that in Orsk in the Urals. They offer courses in hydroelectrics, physics, radio mechanics, economics, computer science, etc. They have a cooperative arrangement with Texas University in Dallas and their management students receive two diplomas, one from each institution. This library was one of the very few that had an open stacks policy. They showed us their lecture hall which Lenin had visited several times, their card catalogs (with glass fronts) and their small computer section which contains the first 59.30 server installed in Russia. They have a direct 100 megabyte (sic) connection to Stockholm and through that to the world. They use Windows and Netscape. We were told they receive grants and some commercial support for facilities and equipment, and are looking for ways to increase their funding substantially.
These two visits illustrate the type of situation we saw at the locations we visited, both with regard to the historical aspects of the institutions, and their current technological situations. Most of the libraries were located in huge stone mansions or palaces, which had been converted for library use. We climbed marble staircases, walked along many passages, and saw people seated in study halls with beautiful architectural decorations (which have usually been well preserved), high ceilings and large windows. Some of the buildings were very cold and in one university library there was no central heating; none was expected until later in November because of a breakdown in the system. The staff, faculty and students were wearing heavy coats, scarves and gloves as they studied, moved around the building, etc. The temperature that October day was in the mid 30s. The Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences had suffered a fire in 1988 and we were shown the preservation and restoration techniques they are using to try to save or restore as many items as they can. However, progress is slow. They have one of only three acid free box making machines in the world. We were given a demonstration of their custom box production procedures, we visited their chemical treatment chamber, and saw parchment and paper replacement, and repainting techniques. (More next time).
SIS OFFICERS, 1997-1998
President -- Joyce Burkhart (St. Petersburg
Junior College, (St. Petersburg Campus)
(813) 341-4732, (burkhartj@email.spjc.cc.fl.us
Vice-President -- Trudie Root (Juvenile Welfare
Board, Pinellas County)
(813) 547-5671, (hn3750@handsnet.org)
Secretary -- Debbie Factor, 167 Almero Way NE,
St. Petersburg, FL 33704
(813) 896-8962.
Treasurer -- Betsy King (Reflectone, Inc.)
887-1658 (kingb@freenet.tlh.fl.us)
Newsletter Editor -- Jackie Jackson (Poynter
Library, USF-St. Pete)
(813) 553-3581 (jackson@bayflash.stpt.usf.edu)
Webmaster -- Shirl Kennedy (Honeywell, Inc.)
(813)539-3256 (skennedy@pobox.com)