CU News Contents:
Library Staff News
In Celebration of Black History Month
The Bancroft Library Presents Inaugural Lectures by New Faculty in the History Department
Berkeley Staff Assembly Excellence in Management Award Nominations
CU News 1950: "Librarians made ‘Publishers’ Weekly’"

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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In Celebration of Black History Month

Last Friday evening, a group of faculty, staff and students gathered in the Morrison Room for readings from the newly published Norton Anthology of African American Literature. The event was sponsored by Vice Chancellor Horace Mitchell, the Black Staff and Faculty Organization (BSFO) and the Library. The readers were: Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, Phyllis Bischof, Librarian for African American and Africana collections, Barbara Christian, professor, African American Studies ( also one of nine contributing editors to the anthology), Pedro Noguera, professor, Education and Dr. Horace Mitchell, Vice Chancellor of Business and Administrative Services. Dr. Mitchell also served as master of ceremonies and introduced the readers.

A heartfelt thank you is extended to the readers who shared poems and prose by their favorite authors, from a childhood memory, as a tribute to local authors, and to present a portion of African American culture. A very special thank you to Chancellor Tien for agreeing to participate since the reading took place just four hours before the Cal Family Tribute saluting the Chancellor and Mrs. Tien.

Kudos to the behind the scenes crew for taking time to plan the event: Louise Garrett, University Relations (formerly Library Development), Alex Warren, Morrison, Imani Abalos, HAS, Victoria Jourdan, Technical Services, and a big round of applause to Jo D. Wright, Teaching Library, for convening the group, providing overall leadership and not taking no for an answer. Special thanks to Mary Scott, Graphics, for the poster design, Janice Dost, HRD, for welcoming our guest to the Library and Sue Rosenblatt, Deputy Librarian, for funding the reception.

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, co-edited by Henry Louise Gates, professor, Harvard University and Nellie Y. McKay, professor of American and Afro-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin, is an overview of the African American Literary Tradition. It is the result of 10 years of work covering 250 years of writing, and 120 writers from 1746 to the present. The anthology contains work songs, folktales, sermons, poetry, gospel, jazz and rap, and slave narratives. It is the first Norton Anthology to be accompanied by a CD-ROM which includes speeches by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and jazz by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Two Berkeley professors, June Jordan, African American Studies department and Ishmael Reed, lecturer in the English department, are among the contributing authors.

- Myrtis Cochran
- Humanities and Area Studies

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The Bancroft Library Presents
Inaugural Lectures by New Faculty in the History Department

"Apocalypse Noir: Carey McWilliams and Posthistoric California"
- Kerwin Klein, Assistant Professor of History
- Tuesday, March 11, 4 pm
- Morrison Library

Carey McWilliams today is best remembered as one of California's most influential culture critics, journalists, and historians. But McWilliams was also a key agent in the popularization of a post-historical discourse that employs apocalypse and entropy as metaphors for the California experience. This lecture traces McWilliam's debts to California Modernism, most notably the work of Robinson Jeffers and Nathanael West, and places the popular historian in a genealogy of California authors from Mark Twain to Mike Davis who have imagined California as Armageddon.

"Building Physics after World War II: Lawrence and Heisenberg"
- Cathryn Carson, Assistant Professor of History
- Thursday, March 13, 4 pm
- Morrison Library

The Second World War marked a crossroads in the pursuit of physics, and the paths taken thereafter were not without alternatives. The talk examines the strategies for building postwar physics chosen by two leaders in enormously different circumstances: Ernest Lawrence in the U.S. and Werner Heisenberg in West Germany.

- Teri Rinne
- Bancroft Library

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Berkeley Staff Assembly Excellence in Management Award Nominations

The BSA Committee on Excellence in Management is calling for candidate nominations for its annual award recognizing outstanding managers and supervisors. Each year a theme is selected consonant with the campus's Human Resources Philosophy. The year's theme is Job Coaching for Organizational Readiness. Organizational readiness - the state in which managers and staff are prepared to accomplish work in new ways, using new technology and streamlined processes - has been identified by the Chancellor as a priority for administrative staff this year.

The BSA Excellence in Management Award provides an opportunity for staff to recognize those supervisors and managers who have exhibited outstanding leadership in coaching staff to meet the challenge of organizational readiness. The award is open to all levels of employees, with the proviso that nominees must have supervisorial or managerial responsibilities for one year or more in their current position. Nominations must originate from staff directly supervised by the nominee and include supporting signatures from at least one-half of these staff.

Nominations must be received by March 14, 1997 to be considered. A nomination form is available at the Berkeley Staff Assembly website: http://bsa.berkeley.edu:4218/

Nominations should be submitted to Stephanie Smith, School of Social Welfare, 120 Haviland Hall, #7400.

- Janice Dost
- Library Human Resources Department

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CU News 1950: "Librarians made ‘Publishers’ Weekly’"

From the 3 May 1950 CU News (Vol. 5, no. 18) by "special news collectors for this week’s CU News," Mrs. Doris Brown and Miss Eve Olson.

Librarians made Publishers’ Weekely for 22 April but big. Page 1809: "A frustrated cataloger" of Hagerstown, Maryland, swears to marry a publisher and have a lot of little publishers in order to train them properly. For instance, they will not be allowed to "publish a book by two authors and then ten years later get out a new edition with the order of the authors’ names reversed on the title page."

Page 1827: Dr. Leigh’s preview of the final and summary volume of the Public Library Inquiry report, appearing in the May Women’s Home Companion, serves as text for Mr. Melchers’ editorial. Quote (Leigh, not Melchers, who is kind): "It’s high time the depressing truth was known about America’s horse-and-buggy libraries. Nine out of ten libraries are inadequate. Studies have shown that libraries have poor public relations, old books nobody wants, lack of funds and of trained personnel, unattractive quarters, outworn memorial tombs."

Page 1829: That Dr. Leigh’s remarks about the poverty of libraries is a base canard is attested by notice of a two-month’s study tour for librarians this fall through Europe… with emphasis on library methods and probrems… historical and cultural landmarks… price $1549.

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