[bksvol-discuss] Re: Meet The New Bookshare Librarian!
- From: "Christina" <greensleeves1@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:39:57 -0500
I'm excited about the new categories!
Christina
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pavi Mehta" <pavim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 1:14 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Meet The New Bookshare Librarian!
Dear Friends,
I know many of you have been curious to hear more about the new
Bookshare Librarian who recently came on board, so I asked if she could
write up a short note introducing herself to all of you. In the midst of
her busy schedule she willingly consented to do this, and it's with
great pleasure that I forward below, Amy McNeely's one-of-a-kind
greeting to the volunteer community.
All good things,
Pavi Mehta, Volunteer Coordinator Bookshare
Hello to the Bookshare Volunteer community! Pavi has told me that you
have asked about me, so I'll take this opportunity to introduce myself.
My name is Amy McNeely and I am pleased to be the new librarian at
Bookshare.
I've been working in libraries since 2000, and have a career certificate
in library technology from Sacramento City College. I received my
Master's Degree of Library and Information Science from UCLA in 2006. I
was a National Library of Medicine Fellow from 2006-2007, and went on to
work at the NYU School of Medicine Ehrman Medical Library as the
metadata librarian after that until the end of 2008. My specialties are
cataloging and metadata, but I have also been trained and worked in
reference.
Over the years I've done some pedestrian librarian work. I've also done
some things a little left of center. The things that stick out most in
my mind are:
* Research on hallucinogenic toads I did while at the California
Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs,
* The time I got to hold Jack Benny's pipe while working in an
archive at UCLA,
* Reading a copy of the Manzanar High School Year Book before I
packed it to be digitized for the California Cultures Digitization
Project,
* The time I missed seeing a car blow up when I was working at
the Fox Studios library (they blew up the Chevy Tahoe while I was
looking at the Suburban! I did see Hugh Laurie from House that day, so
it wasn't a total wash),
* A class project I was involved in where we created a basic
catalog for a California Youth Authority facility so they could finally
lend their books out to the kids,
* A project where I cataloged medical pamphlets published before
1900. Thank goodness for medical miracles that were ether and the saw!
As a metadata librarian, I get asked to define "metadata" fairly often.
It's just information about information. Tables of contents, subjects,
ISBNs, track names in iTunes, the date a Microsoft Word Document was
last saved, and all the tags added in Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook-all
of these are pieces of metadata. They describe the data you are
interested in, whether that data is a book, a song, a document, or a
webpage. All of the information on a book description page in Bookshare
is metadata, including the title, synopsis, book quality, and so forth.
The actual data we describe here is the book you wish to download.
My first major task here is to update the subjects we assign to the
books. Right now, they can all be viewed on the "Browse: Categories"
page, here: http://bookshare.org/browse/category. I have been tasked to
find a new set of subjects to apply to the existing collection and the
collection going forward.
After that, I'm set to work on the collection development plan.
Libraries write plans for their acquisition of books, and for how
heavily they collect in certain areas. Bookshare needs a more
structured approach in how we fill out our collection, especially in how
our acquisition relates to the U.S. Department of Education Office of
Special Education Grant, and that's what I'll be onto next. It'll be a
pretty big job.
I'm also here to do library outreach. Librarians don't know about
Bookshare as much as they ought to. When I go to library conferences, I
will spread the word about Bookshare and do what I can to get as many
school, public, children's, university, college, community college, and
other librarians involved with our organization.
All the while, I'll be supporting Bookshare by doing the things that a
librarian can do, namely, advising the organization on library procedure
and policies, conducting research and reference for people on staff, and
applying my experience and training to issues as they arise.
I'm happy to meet you all! As you can see, I have a lot on my plate.
I'm really excited to be here and really looking forward to helping make
Bookshare the best library it can be.
Sincerely yours,
Amy
Amy McNeely
Bookshare Librarian
(650) 644-3456 tel
(650) 475-1066 fax
amy.m@xxxxxxxxxxxx
The Benetech Initiative
480 S. California Ave. Suite 201
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1609
http://www.bookshare.org <http://www.bookshare.org/>
http://www.benetech.org <http://www.benetech.org/>
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