Outstanding Supervisor Nominees
Awarded to the person who has gone out of their way to help a fellow UGA Libraries employee in a unique situation of unusual stress. This concerns how the nominee went outside of normal work expectations in a specific instance for the benefit of the UGA Libraries mission as a whole and the benefit of a specific employee in the particular situation.
Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm (1 out of 2)
Digital Library of Georgia
What is the nominee's position?
Digital Conversion Manager. As such, she manages and monitors the development of metadata, textual encoding, and supplemental resources for Digital Library projects as well as the day-to-day progress of a wide variety of digital reformatting projects including scanning, optical character recognition, image and text editing, and creating SGML and XML files. This position hires, trains, and directly supervises the work of 5-10 Metadata unit student assistants.
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Anne Marie is a patient trainer, clearly conveys unit expectations to our student staff, assigns work suitable to each student's abilities, and has created a friendly yet production-oriented work environment. From point-of-hire through training and retention, Anne Marie has pulled together an excellent team of student assistants. Under her tutelage, our students emulate her exacting standards. She meticulously tracks their progress and adapts workflows and assignments to meet our project deadlines. Moreover, she has created a departmental manual for student hiring and supervision and has acted on several occasions as a reference point for other student supervisors in our department. As such, she has played a role in building a more effective student workforce for the department as a whole.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
For our Sanborn map conversion project, Anne Marie is not the primary supervisor for the students creating metadata; however, she is their primary point of contact as the project's metadata librarian works only half-time. Through coordination with the metadata librarian, Anne Marie is able to navigate this difficult territory successfully so that the students sense a continuity of approach and the project is able to move ahead successfully.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
Anne Marie also monitors, tracks, and coordinates the departmental student budget. Through her careful husbandry, the department is able to maximize its student spending. She regularly consults with staff members who supervise students to ascertain their needs.
Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm (2 out of 2)
Digital Library of Georgia
What is the nominee's position?
Digital Conversion Manager
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Anne Marie is patient, kind, and extremely hard-working.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
She manages to remain focused & pleasant while dealing with a hectic schedule of students, and detail-oriented tasks.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
Anne Marie enjoys a good game of World of Warcraft.
Science Circulation
What is the nominee's position?
Science Circ Dept Head
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Karen is always polite and understanding, never demanding, when she asks for your assistance. Her memos and instructions, especially with GIL EXPRESS, are always straight forward and easy to follow.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
Karen has been exemplary when implementing GIL EXPRESS and working through all the hiccups.
Acquisitions
What is the nominee's position?
Will Langford's title is Acquisitions Gifts Coordinator and he is my supervisor.
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Mr. Langford has a great knowledge of the process of receiving books and everything that must be done to them before sending them to their right places as well as good communications skills. When I first got my job as his student assistant, I was a little nervous, but he was friendly and made me feel comfortable in the workspace. His positive attitude encouraged me to ask him questions and understand the job and to look forward to coming to work every day.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
When we had a big shipment of Chinese books arrive, Mr. Langford helped organize people in an efficient manner so that the books could be bookplated and stripped by a certain date.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
Mr. Langford is also a potter, but he focuses a great deal of his attention and care to his library work.
Sheila McAlister (1 out of 2)
Digital Library of Georgia
What is the nominee's position?
Project Manager and Digital Metadata Coordinator
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Much of the work that we do is technical in nature. Sheila is very patient with the process of text encoding and with her staff. She carefully explains methods and welcomes questions. Though she is busier than ever with meetings, she has made a couple special efforts to communicate with each member of her staff, organizing bi-weekly meetings with the metadata unit and conducting weekly meetings with each staff member. She has ensured that communication continues to flow in our fast-paced production environment.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
Each digital project presents us with new challenges in allocation of time and resources. Sheila is adept at helping staff to prioritize without neglecting ongoing projects. One effective measure she introduced this year is a statistical tracking system to measure and report our progress on various projects. The reports we deliver to Sheila each month demonstrate the depth and range of our accomplishments, challenging us to maintain production levels or indicating where priorities might need to be adjusted. In addition, the monthly reports give us a chance to review our accomplishments and achieve satisfaction as we realize how much we have contributed to the progress of a project.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
It is Sheila's outstanding organizational talent and knowledge that keeps DLG running smoothly. She continues to encourage staff to take part in training and development. This year she recommended a two-week online digitization course for her staff, which helped us see the big picture of digital library development and the worth of our hard work and adherence to standards. She continues to enable her staff to improve technical and managerial skills through the University's Training & Development seminars. By encouraging her employees to take an active interest in their work, Sheila creates an environment of high morale and promotes a disciplined work ethic.
Sheila McAlister (2 out of 2)
Digital Library of Georgia
What is the nominee's position?
Project Manager and Digital Metadata Coordinator
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
sheila is incredibly fair & considerate of the needs of people in her work area.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
...she likes John Waters movies!
NACS
What is the nominee's position?
Uber Geek
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
I can argue with him. The old guy took any question as dissent and a personal affront to his worldview. The new guy (3 years now) can smoke, joke and drink a coke.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
Dealing with end users is a ongoing ordeal. It's not a good idea to document some of the stuff we have to deal with. Names have been changed to protect the ignorant.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
He does more than smoke out front and write confusing notes to grapevine. Without Dan there would be no new servers for g: and h: , no wireless network, no lotus test webserver, no coldfusion, no online reference (in either configuration), and I would have probably found other employment sometime in 2002.
Systems and Database Support
What is the nominee's position?
Head of GALILEO and Database Support
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Tim is the best supervisor that I have ever had. He compliments us when waranted and his criticism is always constructive. He takes care of "his people" by being the liason between us and those who need to give us more work to do. :-) Tim has always been an open-door manager and lives what he preaches.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
Tim brings us biscuits every Friday.... who can beat that?
While our department has not been through a difficult change, he has led us through many smaller issues that could have been messier had he not intervened on our behalf.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
Tim is an overall good person. I can go to him with personal problems without fear that he will gossip or judge.
Access Services - Security
What is the nominee's position?
Security coordinator
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Ryan has stepped up to the plate to ensure security at Main and Science Libraries, admirably taking on the additional responsibilities and challenges.
Is there a specific incident you'd like to cite? For example, has this person led your unit through a difficult change?
Ryan has been a constant during turnover in the department.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
In addition to being "on top of" security concerns, Ryan is always quick with a quip on current events or a parting shot of cheer as you leave for the day.
Cataloging
What is the nominee's position?
Beth Thornton is the section head of Serials Cataloging.
What makes this person an outstanding supervisor (technical skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills, attitude, leadership)?
Beth is a real team leader that is happy to help us work through problems and find solutions. She is a positive and motivational leader that encourages all her staff to do their best. She also has a depth of technical skills and experience, is a good trainer, and answers our questions patiently and gracefully. She has confidence in us and enables us to be successful. She is our mentor, advocate, friend, and supervisor.
What else do you think the ASSET Awards Committee should know about your
nominee?
Beth is a great person to work with and work for.
