Welcome back. It does not seem possible that the semester is well underway already but time flies when you're having fun. While I can't truthfully say that all of our myriad activities this summer were fun, we certainly accomplished much.
The most immediately obvious was the successful migration to a new online system, Voyager. We join the Library of Congress, Eastman School of Music, Cornell, Penn, and other institutions too numerous to mention in our choice of a system. The public catalog, still called MadCat, is very different from its predecessor and we urge you to attend a workshop to discover many of its features. Alternately, feel free to contact Steve Sundell or me to arrange a training session.
Other activities of note included our hosting a well received annual conference of the Association of Recorded Sound Archives, the installation of new shelving in the cage, much progress on our Brittingham grant to film manuscripts in the Tams-Witmark collection, and several other grant activities. We also revised our own home page, acquired some new full-text electronic resources, and developed a session on Dance Resource on the Internet, to be offered on 7 October.
The new academic year continues to provide challenges but we are pleased to announce the imminent addition to the Music Library staff of two temporary employees. Melba Jesudasen, who officially retired on 30 September from her position at College Library, will assist with reference services and collection development. Before joining the UW staff, Melba served as the head of the Library of Congress Overseas Acquisitions program in New Delhi. Throughout her tenure here, Melba has been very active in campus diversity programs. Melba enjoys music and includes among her publications "Feminist Music and WOMONSONG choir of Madison, Wisconsin," which appeared in the October 1992 issue of Studies in Popular Culture.
Jennifer Ihde, a recent SLIS graduate, will split her time between General Library System Special Collections and the Music Library, working on several of the digital projects we have begun. In addition to her library degree, Jennifer holds degrees from St. Olaf and the University of Basel.
The permanent staff, Steve Sundell, Peg Brown, Alinda Nelson, Mark Rosa, and I are all very much looking forward to October when Melba and Jennifer will begin. Please make them feel welcome.
Finally, we could not operate were it not for the exemplary performance and dedication of our student assistants. Matt Appleby, Christine Buckstead, John Danneker, Nicole DeKeyser, Andrea Gutierrez, Amy Harrell, Morgan Luker, John Moriates, Sarah Murray, Zack Parker, Ubiet Raseuki, Lin Smith, Brandon Watson, and Ayiko Yoshimura were a tremendous help throughout this busy summer. They will be joined this fall by a cadre of new assistants. There are no "tip cups" at our counters so please be sure to thank these individuals when they provide good service.
We look forward to working with you this year.