Volume
2007, Issue 1
March 2007
Inside this Issue:
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Project Highlights
| Arnold
AFB Barksdale AFB DOE Information Center Edwards Air Force Base Eglin Air Force Base Library |
Kirtland AFB United Kingdom Former Goddard Staff USGS "Wear Red" Results |
Arnold AFB
New library director signs on
Stuart Gaetjens is the new director for the IIa-managed technical library at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) at Arnold Air Force Base. He replaces long-time library director Gay Goethert, who retired after being with the library for 30 years. Gaetjens comes to the Arnold library from Illinois College in Jacksonville. In a press release about the appointment issued by Arnold AFB, Gaetjens said he is excited about the challenge, “For me, coming from a small liberal arts college to a place like AEDC, with its technical and engineering-oriented library, that’s a big change.”
Barksdale AFB
Teen Tech Week; adult Free-to-Read program
The Barksdale Library just completed their Teen Tech Week in conjunction with the Youth Center and also their 3rd annual Adult Reading Program “Free to Read.” Pictured left are winners A1C Julia Unsworth (standing, left) and Sabrina Walker (seated, right) with
Major Michael
Rakoczy, 2SVS/CC (standing, right), who presented the winners with Barnes & Noble gift certificates. Also pictured is library director Fran Morris (seated, left). Sabrina read 35 books during the six-week program. Julia read 10 books.
Congratulations to systems administrator Grace Cintron, who is now a Microsoft Certified Professional. Grace completed all of the requirements in the late 2006, and recently received her certification. She has been the library’s systems administrator since 1999.
DOE Information Center
Long-term project nears completion
Thanks to DOE Information Center staffers Julia Beach and Wanda Joyce, the Center’s project to integrate the records of the former Reading Room collection into the DOE IC collection is nearly complete. Staff are adding an Emergency Planning exhibit in the main lobby and were welcomed by DOE staff at the campaign kickoff for the Emergency Planning event in January. Also attending were local community leaders, along with Gerald Boyd, DOE Oak Ridge Operations manager; Ted Sherry, Y-12 site office manager; and James H. Bassham, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. This event was held in January at the DOE Joint Information Center in Powell, Tennessee.
Edwards Air Force Base
Congratulations to military spouses
Congratulations to Beth Burniston at Edwards on the promotion of her spouse, Matt, to Captain in the USAF. Matt will be moving on to the Air Force Space program soon.
Congratulations also to Abbyanne Schneider's husband, Josh, for selection to the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards.
Kristy Shuey's husband, Cliff, has been promoted to SSgt and is being deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom this month. IIa Edwards staff are adopting him as our solider and will send goodie boxes while he is away.
Eglin Air Force Base Library
New director and staff; battle of the brains
Mark Shealy is the new library director at Eglin, coming to the Florida panhandle from Dallas, Texas, with experience managing libraries in Dallas and New York City. Mark is also a college instructor in literature and philosophy. Other new staff include Rebecca Donnelly and Debbie Metzger. Rebecca is now the circulation supervisor. She worked as a library volunteer for two years in charge of Story Time before joining the team. Rebecca and her husband, who is on active duty, have a five-year-old daughter. Debbie is a new part-time library assistant who moved here from England with her husband and teenage son.
The Eglin Base Library is gearing up for a busy spring and summer with programs that include Battle of the Brains (in which Squadrons compete searching online databases); the Month of the Military Child; and the popular READ Dog Program (in which children read to trained therapy dogs). Eglin Base Library is in the process of updating the library’s look with comfortable seating areas, new displays, and a redesigned garden. With library usage, up the team is working toward another Five-Star Air Force Library award.
Kirtland AFB Library
Open house showcases IIa values
IIa’s values program was front and center at the October open house at Kirtland AFB Technical Library. Jeannine Ortiz worked with library director Maryhelen Jones to create pages for each of the 12 values that presented the recognitions each staff member received for each value during the first 12 months of the program (see photo, right). Jones reports that the display got lots of attention and lots of readers.
United Kingdom
Team cited for outstanding performance
Our United Kingdom team is proud to announce that the RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall Base Training and Personnel System Management Teams have received a second, consecutive “exceptional +” rating on their annual CPARS report. According to program manager Kirk Stoye, “Hard work is all we know!”
In addition, the UK team has a new employee, Brian Crane, who joins our team as a base enlisted specialty training manager at RAF Mildenhall.
Three Goddard Staff Members Stay With IIa
Anderson, Hoffman, Redmon support information
sciences work in D.C. area
When IIa’s contract to manage the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ended in December, three talented staff members elected to stay with the company. Randy Hoffman, who was our library manager at Goddard, is now providing a variety of support to various business units. Her current projects include conducting a study for NASA Langley Research Center on the needs for separate integrated library systems within NASA, including the pros and cons of merging all of the libraries’ systems. In addition, Randy is working with Informed Strategies on a study funded by Elsevier to demonstrate the value of scientific, technical, and medical research information to universities.
Technical information specialists Nikkia Anderson and Daniel Redmon are supporting senior information scientist Gail Hodge’s advanced information research and technology group. Anderson is the new content manager for Science.gov. She is working on a project for EPA to review and update the training manual and also testing their new Environmental Terminology System and Services (ETSS) site. In addition, for the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), she is developing a website and mapping some metadata schemes for the upcoming Ecoterm IV workshop that will be held in April in Austria.
For the U.S. Department of Education, Redmon is collecting, analyzing, and reporting on data about the performance and quality of the ERIC Database. In addition, under subcontract to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he is developing the website for the OpenForum on Metadata Registries conference. He is also supporting CENDI and USGS/NBII in the assessment of crawling and metadata harvesting approaches and technologies.
IIa Expands Staff at USGS
Staff of eight provides biodiversity informatics support
IIa now has eight staff members working on biodiversity projects at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Reston, Virginia. Andrea Ostroff, a biodiversity scientist, is the new
manager of the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Node of the NBII. She works with existing partners to develop products that use mapping and database capabilities for an integrated, comprehensive, web-based resource. Ostroff is working to develop standards for fisheries and aquatic resources-related data, and working with partners to enhance applications and make them available to a variety of NBII audiences.
Annette Olson, biodiversity scientist, works with the NBII to build species and biodiversity content and promote collaboration among biologists in the biodiversity informatics field. Annette is the content manager for the NBII Digital Image Library and chairs the Species Knowledge Management Working Group.
Ricardo McClees-Funinan, information specialist, works on the Smithsonian special collections project for the digital image library with Annette Olson. He sorts, scans, and cleans up slides and then collects metadata so that the slides can be uploaded.
Bernadette Guerra, Lakegan Harris, and Nina Chkhenkeli are part of the content development team for four science program website redesigns [Status and Trends of Biological Resources; Wildlife: Terrestrial and Endangered Resources; Fisheries: Aquatic and Endangered Resources; and Invasive Species]. Bernadette is an information specialist who uses her expertise in biology to create content and layout for a new NBII website about reptiles and creates metadata for images uploaded into the NBII Digital Image Library. Lakegan, a digital librarian, is content manager for the "Status and Trends of Biological Resources" and "Invasive Species" websites. Nina, a senior librarian, is content manager for the "Fisheries: Aquatic and Endangered Resources" Program and "Wildlife: Terrestrial and Endangered Species" sites. Both Lakegan and Nina work to improve the information architecture of the sites so that they meet the interests of, and make sense to, very different audiences, including scientists, conservationists, government executives, and the general public.
Janice Hermann, senior information specialist, provides administration support to the Team Leads of the Office of Biological Informatics, including database design and management, and funding in BASIS+. She also works with Annette Olson on the Digital Image Library project.
Crispin Wilson, senior biodiversity informatics scientist, works with the USGS Bioinformatics Office. His main focus is to link scientific and conservation-related databases through accessible gateways, such as the NBII, the Global Data Toolset, and the World Data Center for Biodiversity and Ecology, for which he is the deputy director. Wilson has a wealth of contacts within nongovernmental organizations and specializes in identifying databases on endangered species and protected areas throughout the world, and working with those organizations to establish partnerships.
Third Annual IIa “Wear Red” Day Nets $480
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