Thanks to Jeff Bornstein at the Stanford Channel and Andy Krackov from University Communications, you may not have to leave your desk to watch President Hennessey's Inauguration.

Jeff is setting up a live webcast of the inauguration. For those viewers who cannot get away from their offices and are interested in seeing the ceremony live from their desktops, Andy has provided the following link:

State Librarian Kevin Starr recently notified Stanford that all four of our 2000-2001 applications for funding have been approved. These four competitively-awarded grants, using federal Library Services and Technology Act funds, represent two continuing, and two new, projects, totalling $1,007,643.

The Stanford-California State Library Institute on 21st Century Librarianship will continue under the largest of the grants. Under the direction of Anne Marie Gold, the Institute will operate another one-week residential session on campus, scheduled for 4-11 August 2001, primarily (but not exclusively) for leading California librarians.

The Digital Delivery of Interlibrary Loan Pilot Project is beginning its second year of operation, now under the leadership of Glen Worthey. After a late start last year, the project ramped up rapidly this past Spring and Summer. The project provides innovative services to readers off campus as a means of identifying issues, best practices, and field experience in on-demand scanning and delivery of book-length materials. Many of the books made available to date have been non-circulating (Special Collections) materials, and thus not available under traditional ILL programs.

The new Library Education Needs Assessment project, under the aegis of the Librarianship Institute, will "Conduct research into currently available information and studies on core competencies for all levels of library staff; Develop broad-based profession input into the library education needs assessment and program development process; Conduct a state-wide needs assessment of library education needs for library staff at all levels in all types of libraries."

Finally, the new Library Facility Planning Workshops series, being developed by the Librarianship Institute, will address a new concern for California public librarians. "Proposition 14, the California Reading and Literacy Improvement and Public Library Construction and Renovation Bond Act of 2000 will provide $350M in state bonds for the renovation and construction of public library facilities.... the influx of state bonds will create a major need for training on how to successfully complete public library renovation and construction projects, as well as on how to apply for bond funds.... The workshops will reach 1,100 California librarians and library supporters in various areas of the state." The project will offer three different workshops:

1. Introduction to Library Facility Planning (one day)
2. Library Facility Planning in Depth (two days)
3. School Library-Public Library Cooperative Activities and Joint Use Facilities (one day).

Together, these grants represent a tangible expression of professional respect for the work we all do at SUL/AIR and confidence in programs associated with SUL/AIR.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant to Stanford University Libraries for a two-year study of people's behavior with and attitudes toward electronic journals. It will focus on e-journals mounted on the Internet by HighWire Press, the Libraries' online service bureau for scholarly publishers.

"This domain of on-line scholarly communications is understood mainly intuitively and little researched, said University Librarian Michael A. Keller, who is also publisher of both HighWire Press and the Stanford University Press. There have been many claims regarding efficacy and efficiency of communication, but there is little data available to support any conclusions. This study should go a long way toward improving our understanding of the new modes of scholarly communication."

While the study will be of particular interest to the 60 scholarly societies associated with HighWire, others will benefit as well, Keller said. "This study will assist scholars, librarians, and administrators in higher education and research in making individual and collective choices in how they contribute to scholarly communication," he said.

John Sack, HighWire's associate publisher, added, "While this study will examine the question, 'what does Stanford need to know to make HighWire successful in serving scholarly publishers,' the project will probe more general issues of emerging trends in the use of information by scholars." Much of the findings of the project will be made public.

As you may know, ITSS is now offering 700 GB of disk space to help support unfunded research this year. The hardware to support this was kindly donated by EMC Corporation this summer, and the space is now ready to be allocated. This disk space will be dedicated to supporting very large data sets (greater than 1 GB), which is something we have been unable to support until now.

If you know of any faculty, students or staff/researchers who might have need for this type of space, please feel free to forward this message to them, or refer them to:

Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections welcomes its newest Library Specialist, Steve Gendel. Steve comes to Branner from McKeon Library at St. Patrick's Seminary where he was an assistant cataloger. He also performed circulation, ILL and database management duties there. Last year, Steve completed course work in Foothill College's Library Technology Program, and also worked at the University of San Francisco, South Bay Library in Cupertino as a library assistant.

At Branner, Steve is our Serials/Reserves Specialist, with some Circulation thrown in for good measure. He had a "baptism by fire" since he started work on Monday, September 25th, only two days before the beginning of classes! Well, he has survived, and we feel very lucky to have him working with us. Steve is at the library Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm. If you're in our neighborhood, please drop by to meet him!