NYSHEI News

Edward Weissman, Assistant to the University Librarian, of Cornell University, organized and hosted the July 25th NYSHEI regional meeting and a series of meetings to explore the relationship of the library to the world of economic and workforce development.

Attending the regional meeting – the largest one to date – were Karin Wikoff of Ithaca College, Jean Currie of SCRLC, and a Cornell contingent that included: Pat Viele, Pam Baxter, Linda Miller, Xin Li, Leah Solla, Angela Horne, Gordon Law, Jim Alberts, Oya Reiger, Jean Poland, Barbara Eden, Peter Hirtle, Keith Jenkins and Nan Hyland. Following a brief powerpoint presentation, the group discussed the NYSHEI’s ARIA proposal, new advocacy efforts, and offered suggestions for new NYSHEI initiatives.

The meeting was preceded by a dinner with Anne Kenney, Interim Carl Kroch University Librarian and Senior Associate University Librarian for Public Services and Assessment, and a tour of the Cornell Library Annex (high-density storage facility) by Cammie Hoffmier.

Following the meeting and lunch, Ed Weissman facilitated a series of meeting for NYSHEI Executive Director Jason Kramer. Among them was a conversation about scholarly communications, innovative publishing, open access and project Euclid, with John Saylor and Teresa Ehling.

After meeting with Oya Rieger about digital undertakings at Cornell, Weismann and Kramer were off to the Mann Library to catch up with Janet McCue and Howard Raskin for a tour of the construction and a quick talk about library outreach efforts.

While at Mann, Kramer had the opportunity to learn more about CUGIR from Keith Jenkins, Access Services from Jesse Koennecke, digital collections from Nan Hyland, and VIVO from Medha Devare.

Altogether, the event at Cornell offered a informative discussion of current projects, and the exploration of exciting opportunities for NYSHEI involvement. Special thanks are owed to all meeting attendees and the Cornell staff for their forward thinking and support of NYSHEI.

By the way, the T-shirt is of Ezra Cornell in celebration of his bicentennial. It is on sale through the Library Store.

A.T. Kearney, an economic growth consulting firm, has issued a report for Empire State Development, an executive branch agency.

The report suggests how New York can grow the “innovation economy” called for by Governor Spitzer. Specifically, it proposes a strategy for a “unified statewide economic growth engine fueled by the development of a high-technology infrastructure. Such an infrastructure can be created through the combined efforts of the state, ESD, business, investors, and the academic and research communities.”

This is the argument NYSHEI has been making to state leaders. This is the argument that will help us secure state funding for the purchase of high-end research and development information tools and databases, facilitating teaching, learning and research at New York’s universities and colleges, public and private. In turn, this will provide relief on the over-stretched budgets of those academic libraries.

Jason Kramer, NYSHEI Executive Director said, “we have been ahead of the curve. For months we have promoted the role of academic libraries in creating a statewide information infrastructure to support education and employment well into the 21st century. NYSHEI will continue to advance these goals through the Governor’s office, the state legislature, and the Commission on Higher Education, largely in the form of our ARIA proposal.”

Kramer continued, “we have much work ahead, but all members of NYSHEI should share in the optimism resultant of state leaders paying attention to the concerns of academic libraries.”

NYSHEI Board Member and Monroe Community College Library Director Peter Genovese hosted a Rochester area regional meeting of NYSHEI membership on Monday, July 16.

Chandra McKenzie, Assistant Provost and Director of RIT Libraries, Mary Jo Orzech, Interim Library Director SUNY Brockport, Nina Warren, Genesee Community College Director of Library Services, Deborah Emerson, Rochester Regional Library Council Assistant Director, Melissa Jadlos, St. John Fisher College Library Director, and Jason Kramer, NYSHEI Executive Director, attended the meeting.

The meeting centered on mastering the opportunity to advance academic libraries before Governor Spitzer’s Commission on Higher Education, and finding means to improve member involvement with NYSHEI advocacy efforts.

Following the meeting, Genovese and Kramer met with Charles Caples, Program Director for Workforce Development at Monroe Community College, and incoming President of the Continuing Education Association of New York, to discuss potential partnerships and opportunities to leverage academic library information resources with the needs of the local business community in a manner that benefits students, colleges and, of course, the employers.

Genovese and Kramer also meet with MCC Vice President for Educational Technology Services Jeffrey Bartkovich to gain his insights on NYSHEI’s ARIA proposal.

On Tuesday, July 17, Kramer traveled to SUNY Geneseo to meet with Milne Library Director Ed Rivenburgh to gather his perspective on the activities and prospects of NYSHEI.

It was a very productive series of meetings, providing information that will be advantageous for NYSHEI’s presentation to the Commission on Higher Education.

Pearl Berger, Dean of Libraries at Yeshiva University, has joined the NYSHEI Governing Board.

As a representative of large private academic libraries Ms. Berger will serve a three year term concluding in 2010.

Ms. Berger holds the Benjamin Gottesman Endowed Librarian Chair at Yeshiva University. She is a past president of the Association of Jewish Libraries, where she had previously served as president of the Research and Special Libraries Division, and is a past president of the Council on Archives and Research Libraries in Jewish Studies.

In 1997, Ms. Berger was one of three delegates to Vilnius to examine and report on Jewish collections amassed during the holocaust and housed in the National Library’s Bibliographic Center.

Ms Berger is a past vice president and board member of the Metropolitan New York Library Council. Her latest publication, “Jewish Libraries and Archives in America,” appeared in the journal Judaica Librarianship, 2006.

NYSHEI is pleased to welcome Pearl Berger to the Governing Board and looks forward to her active leadership for the public and private academic libraries of New York.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.