NYSHEI News

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government yesterday held a public policy forum titled: “Community Colleges and the State Workforce.”

Attending to demonstrate NYSHEI’s support of the academic role in economic development, NYSHEI Executive Director Jason Kramer, seized the opportunity of the forum to improve contacts for academic libraries to the economic development interests of the state.

The forum was opened by John Clarke, Interim SUNY Chancellor, and Edward Cox, Trustee of the State University of New York.

Discussing the role of SUNY and Workforce Development were representatives from individual community colleges, public officials from the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation and the Department of Labor. The Executive Vice Chancellor of California Community Colleges also participated to provide a comparitive perspective.

It was a worthwhile event, and NYSHEI thanks Rockefeller Institute Director Richard Nathan and Deputy Director Robert Ward for the opportunity.

A complete transcript of the event will be available at www.rockinst.org.

From now until August 31, 2007, NYSHEI members have the opportunity to sign on for a trial subscription to the CQ Press Electronic Library.

Interested members should Erin Kennedy (ekennedy@cqpress.com) of CQ Press. Be sure to include your name, title, institution, telephone number, and institutiona IP addresses.

Complete details on the collections are available here.

Judith Cohn, Associate Vice President for Scholarly Information and University Librarian at UMDNJ, has made available her presentation to the NYSHEI Annual Meeting.

Focusing on the economic development support of academic libraries, Ms. Cohn spoke of the success of the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative and offered important lessons for NYSHEI’s efforts in New York.

njki-presentation.ppt

The people have spoken – the annual meeting was a success.

The NYSHEI Annual Meeting took place on June 4, 2007 at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The Theme was “Building Partnerships for Print and Electronic Resources”. The speakers were Bernard Reilly (Center for Research Libaries, Chicago), Perry Willett (University of Michigan), and Lofti Belkhir (Kirtas Technologies, Rochester). Panelists included Judith Cohn (representing the New Jersey Knowledge Initiative), Darrin Conroy (NYS SBDC) and Jason Kramer (NYSHEI Executive Director). Over sixty people from forty some institutions attended.

The evaluations of the NYSHEI Annual Meeting were very positive, with close to 100% stating that the program was relevant and timely.

The speakers and panelists received overwhelming approval. Especially noteworthy from the perspective of the attendees were the presentations on digitization by Perry Willett and Lofti Belkhir and the presentation on New Jersey Knowledge Initiative by Judy Cohn.

Attendees considered the panel discussion as informative and useful.

People were quite satisfied with the program publicity, the registration procedures and cost, the facilities and the location at Vassar in Poughkeepsie. Everyone agreed to keep the program on one-day with the same amount of activities, but people were split over whether to align it with another conference or not. It may depend upon the circumstances.

Attendees had good suggestions about how to improve the logistics, facilities and food at the Annual Meeting, including time to learn a little more about NYSHEI during the business meeting (while keeping the business meeting relatively short). Overall, very favorable comments about NYSHEI and the NYSHEI Annual Meeting.

Thank you for your feedback and for your continued support of NYSHEI.

Gary Thompson
Siena College

SUNYLA 2007 was a rousing success. Held at Maritime College this well attended event had something for everyone.

Maritime Library Director Constantia Constantinou was a model host, and has set the bar high for all future SUNYLA events. Well done. Please visit SUNYLA to read more.