Aaron Denk is heading for Roosevelt University in Chicago to pursue a Masters Degree in Opera.

Tamara Drew is moving to Chicago to seek one year's employment at an urban non-for-profit organization before beginning graduate school to obtain a Master's Degree in Sociology.

Debbie Myers will be attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seeking a Masters Degree in Library Science. She has obtained a highly competitive graduate assistantship in the undergraduate library to help pay for the degree.  At the recent Honors Convocation, Debbie was inducted in Phi Kappa Phi, "A national honor society limited to ... seniors who rank in the upper ten percent of their class" and received an Alpha Lambda Delta Senior Certificate "awarded to members of [Alpha Lambda Delta national honor society] who have maintained a 3.5 grade point average for four years."

I note that Debbie is hardly the first student worker to be inspired to get a Masters Degree in Library Science after working in our library. In fact, one of the current librarians (Cindy Fuller) is one such alum; and Catie Parish `03 is presently attending library school while continuing to work with us.  Our November 2001 newsletter lists others who have followed that same route in the last 30 or so years.

Sarah Popkin is heading for graduate school at Eastern Illinois University, pursuing a Masters Degree in Communications.

Wendi Spitzig has been accepted at Loyola University in Chicago for graduate school to pursue a Masters Degree in Social Work. At the recent Honors Convocation, Wendy was awarded the Dr. Everett J. Brown Prize "for excellence in creative contributions to communication."

In other noteworthy student staff accomplishments, Angie Mircsov and Laura Podeschi have paintings exhibited in Millikin's annual juried student art show, at the Kirkland Perkinson art gallery.

Electronic Resources: Every year we review our electronic resources to make sure that we are offering the most useful resources we can within our budget. Next year we are adding a communications database that received quite a bit of enthusiastic use when we offered it as a trial. (Provider: EBSCOhost.) It will be available via our library website on July 1.

Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) Library Journal (LJ), in the April 15, 2005 issue, awarded their "Best Reference 2004" designation to this database, which was selected by the journal editors as being one of the eight best online resources introduced in 2004.

In the February 15, 2005 issue of LJ, the reviewer stated that CMMC  "is one of the best interdisciplinary databases with which I have worked. It stretches effectively over a wide range of humanities and social sciences subjects, addressing a host of 'between the cracks' issues."

As to trial databases, in the future we will be providing a link to any test databases right on the library home page, rather than (as we have in the past) asking our users to find them under the "trial databases" home page link. 

Archives: The Archives website continues to grow, with recent additions to the Millikin history time line and with ongoing additions to the exhibits page. The current exhibit, which honors the career of Eugenia Allin who was the Millikin University library director for most of the first half of the University's history, will be added to the archives website at the conclusion of the "live" exhibit in the cases next to the library's center stairs. Catie Parish, Archives Associate, is responsible for the creation and management of these pages.

Librarian search update: In early April we conducted telephone interviews with eight candidates for our Library Instruction Coordinator & Research/Instruction Librarian position, selecting an impressive four to bring to campus for all-day interviews in the latter part of April (after checking up on their references). We always forget how intense those interview days are, and not just for the candidates! I strongly believe, however, that we make the best hires by involving everyone on the library staff, including some of the student staff; and we also get input from faculty and administration outside the library. We have not yet made our final decision in this search; but we intend to have someone in place for the beginning of the fall 2005 semester.

Still more Peeps: After their turn on CBS, Jen Masciadrelli and Susan Avery brought their Peeps Research website to the Association of College and Research Libraries' national conference in Minneapolis for a well-attended poster session. Two of our librarian candidates stopped by to say hello, among many others. And, as of April 25, that page had been looked at 503,308 times. Never in our wildest imaginations could we have designed this kind of publicity for our library and for Millikin, if that were what we had been setting out to do! And GOOD publicity, I hasten to add.

New books and other materials
As always, be sure to check each month on the library's new acquisitions. March's new titles have been added.

(cartoon by Angie Mircsov, library student staff)

Have a wonderful summer!

Karin Borei University Librarian and Director of International Programs kborei@mail.millikin.edu