The Spring Quarter issue of "Speaking of Computers" is now being distributed. Produced by the Academic Computing group within SUL/AIR, this newsletter provides news and information about campus computing and technological activities and resources, including technology-related library resources and services.

You can access "Speaking of Computers" on the Web at:

http://speaking.stanford.edu/

If you would like a printed copy, or if you want to subscribe to "Speaking of Computers", please send mail to pubs@netserver.stanford.edu. (Those who already subscribe to "Speaking of Computers" should be receiving a copy of the new issue through ID mail within a week.)

The Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections, is pleased to announce the exhibition Johannes Lebek: The Artist As a Witness of His Time. This event celebrates the work of Lebek (1901-1985), a renowned master of the woodcut and one of Germany’s finest, although lesser-known, 20th century illustrators. With an emphasis on documenting the artist’s life and production, the exhibition will feature prints, illustrated books, photographs, sketchbooks, and manuscript material. Johannes Lebek: The Artist As a Witness of His Time will be on view at Stanford University’s Cecil H. Green Library, Peterson Gallery, second floor of the Bing Wing from April 15 through June 30, 2002. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Born in Zeitz, Germany, in 1901 to working class parents, Lebek was a prolific artist working in the Northern Romantic tradition whose emerging sensibilities were influenced by his country’s strong graphic arts traditions and the rise of German Expressionism. Despite experiencing the turmoil of poverty, two world wars, and life under the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, Lebek’s illustrious career as an artist began with studies at the prestigious Leipzig Academie für graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe (Academy for the Graphic Arts and Book Production) under the direction of German woodcut and engraving master Hans Alexander Mueller. Lebek became a woodcut instructor at the Academie in the 1950s, and he, along with colleague Frans Masereel, was a founding member of the Xylon International Society of Wood Engravers. In 1969 he emigrated to Adelebsen, West Germany, and began a new phase of vigorous productivity.

By the time of his death in 1985, Lebek was credited with supporting a revival of the woodcut medium in Leipzig in the 1960s and 1970s. He had produced single prints, topical cycles and portfolios of prints, children’s books, an important woodcut primer, and illustrations to books—including several literary classics—by approximately fifty authors.

The exhibition will highlight prints and other works of graphic art that focus on biographical and religious themes, and the depiction of landscapes—both urban and rural—from Lebek’s childhood through his later adult life. A poignant sketchbook diary, created during Lebek’s internment in an American POW camp in France, will also be featured, along with examples of illustrated book works by his contemporaries Fritz Kredel, Fritz Eichenberg, Käthe Kollwitz, Frans Masereel, and Hans Alexander Mueller.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Stanford University Libraries announces the publication of the exhibition catalogue Johannes Lebek: The Artist As a Witness of His Time. With text by Ronald Salter, Professor of German Literature and Art at Tufts University, and several illustrations including a letter press printing of four previously unpublished woodcuts from the cycle Tagzeiten (Times of the day), the publication is available for $27.50 per copy plus tax and shipping. To order copies, please contact the Department of Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6004; attn: Lisa Marie Hall, phone 650-723-1812;email lmhall@sulmail.stanford.edu.

PLEASE NOTE: Images to accompany this press release are available upon request. For images, and further information about the exhibition, please contact Becky Fischbach at 650-725-1020 or via e-mail at efischba@stanford.edu

LOCATION:
Peterson Gallery, Green Library
Bing Wing, Second Floor
Stanford University, Stanford, CA

DATES:
April 15 through June 30, 2002

HOURS:
Gallery hours through June 12, 2002 are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday 1 to 6 pm. For library hours after June 12, please call 650-723-9108.

CONTACT:
Vanessa Kam
650-723-9523; fax 650-723-8690
e-mail: dvkam@sulmail.stanford.edu

"Ordeal by Piton, Writings from the Golden Age of Yosemite" Climbing highlights the close ties between Stanford, Yosemite, and the Sierra Club, from Stanford's first president and Sierra Club founding member David Starr Jordan through the glory years of the Stanford Alpine Club in the 1940s to 1970s. Created in collaboration with award-winning author Steve Roper, the book will include writings and photographs by a number of Stanford alumni and many other notable climbers. It will also include photographs of long-time library staff member Glen Denny, one of the greatest climber/photographers of the period.

Printing costs are being underwritten by donations from Stanford Alpine Club alumni and from Ron Klein, whose endowed book fund has been instrumental in building the library's rich collection
of travel guides and travel and exploration literature. The Klein fund's distinctive book plate is well-known to innumerable readers who find delight and inspiration in the various genres of travel writing. In appreciation of Mr. Klein's continuing support for the libraries proceeds from the sale of "Ordeal by Piton" will be used to augment The Milton and Annette Klein Collection of Books on Travel and Exploration.

As for the earlier publication "The Stanford Alpine Club," CSLI Publications will be our co-publisher. The book should be completed around Christmas 2002.

Information: John Rawlings, SSRC

The Open Archives Initiative, guided by a team at Cornell and sponsored by the Coalition for Networked Information and the Digital Library Federation, is overseeing creation of the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol. This mechanism allows metadata to be collected from many servers, then aggregated and made available in new services. Universities and other organizations can thus disclose the existence of their informational assets -- e-prints, technical reports, learning materials, image collections, and so on -- in a consistent way. With this approach, we can shine a light on the "dark" or "hidden" web, which is not visible to today's search engines. How will the mechanism work to reveal the existence of valuable institutional materials? What impact will the initiative have on user scholarship, learning, and personal fulfillment by connecting users with previously hidden resources? How will reference professionals and other information seekers harness the power of metadata harvesting?

Friday, April 12th from 2:30 - 5 pm in Meyer Room 183, SUL/AIR will be playing back the OCLC sponsored videoconference on the Open Archive Initiative featuring Herbert Van de Sompel, British Library, with host Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Office of Research. Also appearing will be expert practitioners: Joann Kaczmarek, Project Coordinator, Illinois Open Archives Initiative Metadata Protocol Harvesting Project and Visiting Assistant Professor, Library Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Stephen Pinfield, Academic Services Librarian, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.

Also, remember next week's videoconference on "The OAIS Imperative: Enduring Record or Digital Dust?" with host Meg Bellinger, Vice President, OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources, featuring Donald Sawyer, NASA, Friday, April 19th, 9 -- 11:30 am, PDT, Meyer 183. The Open Archival Information System proposes a framework for preserving our digital heritage. The library community and other information professionals around the world , including SUL/AIR, are planning to use this standard for preserving and maintaining access to born-digital materials. What does OAIS mean to the library profession? How can we apply it to local projects? How can we impact this emerging standard and its systems implications? Expert practitioners for this discussion include Bruce Ambacher, Electronic & Special Media Records Services Division, US National Archives and Records Administration; and MacKenzie Smith, Assistant Head of Technology, MIT Libraries.

Please call Angela Wright at 3-2015 to reserve a space for either / both events.

Jackson Library is bringing back the J - Z classification books that were temporarily moved to storage last June. FYI, Q - T classification books are now available in the Main stacks on the third floor of the library. J - P and U - Z books will be returned to the stacks this summer.

For more on this see

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/staff/infocenter/jackson.html

We've added more datasets to the DEWI System. Developed by the Social Sciences Resource Group (SSRG), DEWI stands for Data Extraction Web Interface, and as the name implies, it is a web-based system for searching and extracting variables within numeric datasets. The DEWI System makes data extraction quicker and easier for data users by eliminating the need to search for printed codebooks or write programs to extract variables. It incorporates the important online documentation and variable metadata into a seamless and convenient system. Keyword searches result in a list of variable 'hits' that can be selected for final extraction. Variable sample frequencies and other information can be viewed within DEWI to help the data user decide which variables to extract. Extract files can be directly downloaded to your PC in a variety of formats, such as SPSS, Stata, SAS, or Excel.

The DEWI System has been used in statistical methods courses to allow students to use 'real' data in their assignments, as well as by researchers to explore the relevance of DEWI datasets in their analyses.

DEWI contains a growing collection of numeric datasets:

• General Social Surveys (GSS): 1972-1993
• Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994
• National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 -- 2nd and 3rd Follow-up Studies: 1992 and 1994
• Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS): 1987-1988, 1990-1991, 1993-1994
• Survey of Employment, Income, and Attitudes in Russia (SEIAR), January-March 1998
• Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS): 1988-1989, 1991-1992, and 1994-1995
• World Values Survey and European Values Surveys: 1981-1984, 1990-1993 and 1995-1997

Check out the DEWI System at our new web site. Click on the DEWI button.

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/ssds/

Meredith Williams, the GIS Manager at Branner Earth Sciences Library, has recently had a chapter published in "Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History." The book has been published by ESRI Press and was edited by Anne Kelly Knowles.

The chapter, Historical Maps in GIS, was co-written with David Rumsey. In it, the authors show many ways in which viewing and using historical maps can be enhanced by combining them with the newest of mapping technologies. For instance, Lewis and Clark's map of North America, is compared with current state boundary data to assess the accuracy of the original. Up-to-date street data is laid over an 1836 map of New York City, allowing the viewer to see what was lost when Central Park was created. The chapter is lavishly illustrated with full-color maps
from David's online map collection.

The book is now on the new book truck at Branner Library. Afterwards, it will be available to check out. Or, get your own copy from ESRI and come over to have Meredith sign it!

Many of you have used Luna Insight to search Stanford's online image collections of Athanasius Kircher letters, Chicana Art, and the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. We are in the process of adding more digital image collections to our Insight installation.

Insight software is an innovative library and museum application with a quickly growing user base across the United States and around the world. This user community is also innovative in its relationship with Luna Imaging, Inc., the creators of Insight: each year, representatives of libraries and museums which deploy Insight gather with company representatives to discuss how we are all implementing Insight in our various institutions; what new sorts of Insight collections are in the works; what developments we can expect to see in future releases of Insight; and what changes we, as a user community, would like to encourage Luna to implement.

SUL/AIR is pleased to host this year's annual meeting of the Luna Insight Users' Group on April 22-24 in Green Library. We expect from 50 to 70 librarians, curators, and systems people from the U.S. and Europe to convene for this meeting, and invite all interested members of the Stanford community to attend.

Although some of the topics are of a somewhat technical nature, a large number are of broad interest. For the meeting agenda and additional information, please see the meeting website.

The meeting is being arranged by SUL/AIR's Humanities Digital Information Service (HDIS). Please contact Glen Worthey at glenw@sulmail.stanford.edu for more information.

SUL/AIR has the following new positions this week.

For a complete description of open positions within SUL/AIR, visit the recently redesigned Opportunities for Employment page on the Human Resources Web site.