Friends of the UNCG Libraries

Bill and Wilma Bates love the University Libraries, and their gifts demonstrate that appreciation for the role of the libraries in campus life.  The Bates Collaboratory, Room 574 in the Jackson Library Tower, was recently renovated and named to honor William Bates, Professor Emeritus of Biology, whose career spanned 1966-2000.  Bill was Head of the Biology Department from 1979-1988, so it is particularly appropriate that the Collaboratory should be located on the Fifth Floor of the Tower along with the biology collection.  Both during his career and after his retirement, Bill has spent a lot of time in Jackson Library, particularly at his faculty study. His wife Wilma, now retired, was a media coordinator in the Guilford County Schools.  Frequent attendees at library events, the two want to give back to the Libraries and have been members of the Jackson Society for several years and members of the Friends for more than a decade.  We are appreciative of the...

In January, we announced   that Tim Bucknall, assistant dean of libraries and head of electronic resources and information technologies at UNCG had been named   the 2014 Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The award, sponsored by YBP Library Services, recognizes an outstanding member of the library profession who has made a significant national or international contribution to academic/research librarianship and library development. Bucknall received the $5,000 award during the ACRL President's Program at 10:30 am on Saturday, June 28, 2014, at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas.   We also took the opportunity this summer to celebrate the achievement with many of Tim’s colleagues in the state and area.   Mary Ellen Davis, executive director of ACRL offered remarks, as did Leah Dunn of UNC Asheville and Dana Sally of Western Carolina who nominated Bucknall for the award. The occasion ...

Terry Brandsma of the ERIT Department was recently elected to serve a two-year term (2014-2016) as one of the 4 co-chairs of the WMS Community Leadership Team.  While Terry’s work in this area is mostly transparent to those who use the library’s catalog, OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services (WMS) manages the ordering, processing, and circulation of library materials, along with holds, book renewals, print reserves, and similar user services. The WMS Community Leadership Team plans and hosts online meetings for the community of WMS users, and serves as the primary conduit for the community to provide feedback and suggestions to OCLC. Terry also recently presented at (and helped plan) the "2014 WMS Southeast Users Group Meeting", held at Brenau University, Gainesville, GA, on June 2-3, 2014.

Rosalind Moore The Black Caucus of the American Library Association has announced that Rosalind Moore, a recent graduate of the library and information science program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, received BCALA’s 2014 Graduate Student Award. She was selected because she contributed to the cause of BCALA as a graduate student. Moore was active and lent her time preparing, participating in some of BCALA’s most notable programs. She made presentations at the National Conference of African- American Librarians, the American Library Association conference, and the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color. Rosalind is a product of the ACE Scholars Program at UNCG.

University Archivist Erin Lawrimore has been awarded the UNCG University Libraries’ Innovation and Enrichment Grant for 2014-2015. Her project will focus on enhancing access to oral history recordings conducted by staff of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) as part of the UNCG Institutional Memory Project. SCUA has a long tradition of conducting and preserving oral history interviews with faculty, administrators, students, and alumni from across the University’s history. These interviews, which typically are an hour or more in length, provide in-depth information about an interviewee’s contributions to and viewpoint on specific time periods or events in campus history. A recent focus has been on documenting the experiences of African American students during the 1960s and 1970s. Often these interviews provide valuable personal insight into history in a way that the official university records cannot. Currently, access to these oral histories i...

Christine Fischer, Head of the Acquisitions Department, was recognized this spring as the the faculty recipient of the 2014 Supervisory Recognition Award, and she was honored on April 4 during the Faculty and Staff Excellence Award ceremony. Here are her comments about working in the University Libraries.

(L-R) 2013 Service Award Winner Susan Hendrickson with 2014 Winner Katherine Nunnally (photo by Cheryl Cross) "To recognize and reward members of the SPA Library Staff who provide outstanding leadership and service in furthering the accomplishment of the mission of the Library to provide service to students, faculty, staff and members of the community which the University serves." Martha Ransley For a number of years after Martha Ransley created the Staff Service Award for the University Libraries upon her retirement in 1997, she knew all of the first recipients well, and had mentored most of them. In more recent years, the award has gone to people who have come to work here after Martha retired, but they still demonstrate many of the same qualities that she admired and helped instill in the culture of the Libraries during her tenure.  Katherine Nunnally, the 2014 winner of the staff service award, is such a person.  Nominating forms submitted recommen...