CU News Contents:
Library Staff News
"Librarians Interested in Our Future?"
Entertaining in the Morrison Library: A Reminder
The Morrison Library in 1950
CPA Report: "Digital Image Collections: Issues and Practice"

Library Staff News

Library Unit Heads and Supervisors are encouraged to submit short introductions of newly appointed personnel so that Library staff can get to know them.  Announcements of staff promotions, reclassifications, awards/publications, transfers, departures and other staff news are also welcomed by the CU NEWS editor.

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"Librarians Interested in Our Future?"

The Lauc-B Research and Professional Development Committee is sponsoring the Spring semester series on "The Future of Libraries and Librarianship."

We are pleased to announce that Bob Berring, Law Librarian and Professor of Law at UCB Boalt Hall, will begin the series with some thoughts and humor on 'The Future of Librarianship' with an Early Bird scheduled on February 20, 1997 at 8:30-10 am in the Morrison Room, Doe Library.

All interested librarians are invited to attend. Coffee and tea will be provided.

- Grace Mills
- Law Library, Boalt Hall

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Entertaining in the Morrison Library: A Reminder

Please be informed that any unit or department hosting any kind of reception or party where alcohol will be served must obtain an alcoholic beverages form from the Special Events Coordinator, UC Police Department, 1 Sproul Hall. The form should be returned to the Coordinator at least one week before the event. You may call the Coordinator at 642-0799 if you have any questions.

- Alex Warren
- Morrison Library

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The Morrison Library in 1950

- From CU News, Volume 5, Number 34, 30 August 1950, by Helen Bretnor.

Last spring, a survey of the users of Morrison Library was undertaken as a project for Librarianship 215 by three Library School students, Alice Fledderman, Helen Kemnitzer and Marie Lusk. They stated that their main intention "was to get a general picture of the reading interests and habits of the people who use the Morrison room. Since it seems that very few people use the room in proportion to the huge campus population and to the attractions it holds, we were interested in the actual proportion of university students and faculty who do use it." They discovered that, of the 191 users participating in their survey, an unusual proportion were men, with a preponderance of upper division and graduate students. The proportion of men to women users ran about 6 to 1 in the survey, but overall Morrison records show it to be nearer 4 to 1, which is almost exactly the ratio for the University.

The survey was conducted by means of a questionnaire which asked for age, university status and major, and the subjects and magazines read in Morrison. Three intentionally broad, comment-inviting questions followed -- "Why do you use Morrison Library? How did you get started using Morrison Library? What comments or suggestions would you make to improve the Morrison Library?" The answers to these provide some entertaining comments as well as some handsome compliments for Morrison itself and for its staff.

Why do you use Morrison Library? "Because of its comfortable atmosphere and its assortment of books which makes browsing possible... I enjoy reading and the Morrison Library provides good books and a proper atmosphere... To get away from all that prescribed reading. Ugh!... To supplement what I don't learn in school... Peaceful. Good selection of new books... Because I like the atmosphere and the fact that I can pick what I want and sit comfortably to read." These answers, very characteristic of the whole, indicate that most readers had understood the purpose of Morrison, but one candid male wrote: "Read, rest, and catch a nap now and then."

How did you get started using Morrison Library? Only some ten of the users mentioned hearing of Morrison through leaflets, tours, or other such publicity. Some six or seven had first come in for a poetry reading or one of the Tuesday recorded concerts. The rest either "stumbled in" or heard about Morrison through friends, like the student who explained "One day, soon after I'd just come here about two years ago, I had taken 2 midterms in one morning, and someone said: 'What you should do is collapse in Morrison with a ‘New Yorker’' - and I did.'" Some of those responding referred to professors who told the class about it. One came in because of the "beautiful glass doors."

What comments or suggestions would you make to improve the Morrison Library? The majority of users urged --Please leave it the way it is! When suggestions were made, they often seemed to be (as the three students making the survey put it) "scraped up from the bottom of the barrel just because the writer thought he should have something to say." In this category, surely, belong such suggestions as "Have some flowers...Chairs covered in less abrasive materials... Improvement only through continuous playing of classical music." Surprisingly, only a few wanted smoking allowed, perhaps because there were a good many requests for better ventilation. There were complaints about the lighting, also. But even those complaining joined in the praise of the "librarians," the excellent management of the room, the quiet, and the high quality of the book selection. One dissenter, however, wrote a full page on the "unnecessary gaps" in Morrison's poetry collection, advising roundly: "Take out all the war-time trash you have in the balcony... you had done better had you spent this money on poetry."

The highest commendation of all came indirectly, through a student who explained that she started to use the room because "A friend of mine suggested that he received his education in a little room called Morrison."

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CPA Report: "Digital Image Collections: Issues and Practice"

The Commission on Preservation and Access has issued its December 1996 report on "Digital Image Collections: Issues and Practice," by Dr. Michael Ester, former Director of the Getty Art History Information Program. The Preface states that this is the first report from CPA - which has recently merged with the Council on Library Resources - to "focus on what sets the digitization of visual collections apart from other scanning projects. Projects to digitize visual collections present their own unique set of questions and concerns, as well as issues that overlap with digital capture of text." The author "provides library and archives administrators and others who oversee digitization projects with ways of thinking about this activity for the long-term benefit of preservation and scholarship."

For more information visit CPA’s web page at: http://www-cpa.stanford.edu/cpa/index.shtml

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