[bksvol-discuss] Re: Meet The New Bookshare Librarian!
- From: "solsticesinger" <solsticesinger@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:10:51 -0600
Amy,
It is a pleasure to meet you. Good luck with all that you'll be doing for
bookshare. It sounds like we're lucky to have you.
Shannon
"The different among us tell our stories because we are all only human and so
much need a witness to the truth,"
Claudia Bepko
----- Original Message -----
From: Pavi Mehta
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 12:14 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.benetech.org
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