Libraries Faculty Newcomer of the Year
Awarded to a Libraries' faculty member who has exhibited:
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Exceptional job performance,
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Strong work ethic,
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Commitment to service,
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Excellent communication and interpersonal skills ,
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Successful initiation of working relationships, and
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Demonstration of solid potential for future service to the Libraries.
Libraries' faculty members/classified staff members who were hired between December 1, 2005 and November 30, 2006 are eligible for this award.
Deb Raftus, Reference/SLC
Deb joined the University of Georgia Libraries in March, 2006 as a reference- instruction librarian/psychology selector. Due to the departure of the SLC instruction coordinator just a couple months after her arrival, Deb assumed these duties very early in her tenure. While the majority of this position is scheduling and teaching, her assumption of coordination duties near the time the annual statistics needed to be compiled meant that she was confronted with creating this report almost immediately. I was particularly delighted with her thorough and thoughtful attention to this task. Deb used this exercise to analyze what our database of instruction statistics should look like and assisted with our subsequent design.
Due to another departure Deb became chair of the Professional Development Committee of the Libraries’ Faculty. The programs which the Committee offered under her guidance were outstanding. Deb spotted needs in the organization and arranged to provide sessions that helped to give staff context for developments in our organization and on campus.
With a colleague Deb also initiated a library award for undergraduate research. The proposal was well reasoned and laid out the procedures for reviewing student papers in a thorough manner. The first cash awards were made this spring.
Deb was selected for ALA’s 2007 Emerging Leaders Program. She has attended ALA twice since she arrived in Georgia. While in New Orleans for the 2006 annual conference, she also found time to attend a pre-conference on liaison responsibilities and helped to label books for a devastated school library. On top of all this Deb has helped coordinate the Libraries Bowling Team, the GV 903s!
Deb Raftus, Reference/SLC
In Deb's short time here she has been very busy! In addition to her reference duties, Deb chairs PDRC (Professional Development & Research Committee), a very active faculty committee. PDRC has hosted programs on a wide variety of topics from hands on sessions in creating electronic dossiers to presentations by Tim Peacock about Libraries' systems. Deb's work in keeping this active committee organized and relevant is a testament to her dedication and hard work.
Craig Breaden, Russell Library
From the Russell with Love, a nomination for Craig Breaden as Newcomer of the Year (Libraries'Faculty)
Within two months of Craig Breaden’s arrival at the Libraries, his immediate supervisor departed for another job. Slightly shaken but not stirred, Craig barely skipped a beat as he took over the reins of his new but unexpectedly evolving position. In his first nine months at Russell Library, Craig demonstrated thoughtful assessment of the department’s practices and resources with regard to its media holdings. He researched standards, cost-effectiveness, cooperative opportunities, and designed and presented a proposal that would shift the department’s recordings from analog to an audio digital preservation program. In the process, Craig showed initiative in garnering support and shared resources from three other University Libraries departments—Systems, Digital Library of Georgia, and Media Archives. Key to the planning is a three-tiered redundant backup of DVD, Hard Drive, and LTO Tape. Through networking at the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning and requests to the Libraries’ Development Officer, he was able to acquire some used equipment for the proposed lab. The Libraries Administration was impressed by the innovative proposal and stretched its resources in a difficult budget year to find the rest of the funding. By establishing a comprehensive audio preservation service, Craig benefited not only the Russell but also the Libraries as a whole, he now does audio preservation work for other departments in this newly established lab. Over the course of the year, through initiative and creativity, Craig expanded the scope of his basic work and the media assets position evolved to one comparable to a departmental unit head.
Equally significant, Craig is taking responsibility for managing the Russell Library’s oral history program. During the last three years, outside groups have made increasing requests of the department for oral history production. While these productions are worthwhile and add to the library’s holdings, they tax the department’s resources tremendously in terms of staff, time, and funding. In anticipation of a Political Parties Oral History Project, which is already half funded, Craig was asked to supervise that project’s manager when the person is hired. In the political parties project alone, a minimum of forty people will be interviewed. To save on expenses, Craig recommended that the Library film some of the oral history rather than outsource. After purchasing a camera and accessories, Library staff conducted their first interview and documented actual costs and savings. While the Library can now fundraise based on what an hour of oral history production will cost, there is full expectation that oral history will become an endowed program, and a proposal is pending with a prospective donor. By organizing these productions administratively within the department, oral history has fully developed as another functional unit of work in the department.
Craig is already demonstrating leadership through membership in several campus committees, and he is working directly with donors and collection development. Given his previous experience with digital projects, he was appointed, virtually on his arrival, to a Libraries Video Subcommittee for the Civil Rights Digital Library project. He was also appointed to the 2007 King Week Education Subcommittee.
Professionally, Craig’s award-winning student paper, “Sound Practices,” appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of American Archivist. He served as interim co-editor for two issues of the 2006 Society of Georgia Archivists newsletter. Craig was one of two awarded a 2007 Conference Travel Grant by the Association of Recorded Sound Collections, and he is scheduled to lead a panel discussion on uses of new media in cultural institutions at the 2007 SAA annual meeting in Chicago.
In summary, as a faculty newcomer at the Russell Library, Craig Breaden established a successful, innovative audio services preservation lab while managing the department’s media assets effectively and efficiently. He also willingly accepted additional responsibilities to spearhead the department’s evolving program for oral history. He assumed a leadership role in approaching other departments within the Libraries and across campus and in establishing a network of cooperative links; and he is investigating other funding sources for certain elements of the collection. As a first-year faculty member, his professional contributions are exceptional. Craig Breaden’s overall job performance and contributions to the Russell Library, the Libraries, and the University attest to his professional competence, outstanding work ethic, initiative, and demonstrated potential.
Sarah Ricker, DLG
Sarah has proved herself an invaluable addition to the DLG. Over the year, she has grown extensively in her role as CRDL metadata librarian. Since her arrival, she has cataloged over 175 newsfilm clips from the WSB and WALB newsfilm collections. In order to successfully describe this raw news footage, she has extensively researched the Civil Rights movement. Her growing knowledge of the civil rights movement has been due to her own initiative and has become quite impressive. Moreover, in concert with the Peabody Awards cataloger, she drafted suggestions for moving image description for the project by looking at AMIM2, Dublin Core, and the functionality needs of the portal. Most recently, Sarah has begun the task of contacting potential metadata partners to request descriptive records for inclusion in our portal.
Sarah also brings excellent organizational skills to the table. She ably tracks her own workflow and serves as minute taker for the metadata subgroup of the project. She willingly takes on new projects and approaches them in a thorough, efficient, and thoughtful manner. In particular, Sarah’s use of the wiki has improved the sharing of project-related data, and she has become the point person for wikis in the department. Her efforts have helped with the unit’s own efforts for better documentation.
Sarah has also begun to develop in her role as a libraries faculty member and as a professional librarian. She regularly attends faculty meetings, serves as a member of the PDRC, and attends appropriate professional development workshops offered at the libraries. Since her arrival, she attended OLAC and provided metadata assistance to the PASCAL digital initiatives group. This summer, Sarah is helping with supervision and monitoring of our Civil Rights Digital Library intern.
Leigh Ann Ripley, DLG
Since beginning her position as Digital Projects Archivist, Leigh Ann has hit the ground running. She quickly absorbs new tasks and has grown significantly in her position. Over the past year, she has created helped created new digital projects such as For Our Mutual Benefit : The Athens Woman's Club and Social Reform, 1899-1920. She is currently pulling together a project on the Gainesville tornado of 1936. As evidenced through her degree in public history, Leign Ann is passionate about bringing users to our resources. As such, she took the initiative to reach out to university-level faculty in history, historic preservation, and architecture to promote the Sanborn map project. Other outreach activities have included speaking to the Athens Woman's Club and her efforts as part of the library's Archives Week committee. Leigh Ann has also begun contributing to the profession at large through her involvement in the Society of Georgia Archivists. She serves as the membership editor for the society's newsletter. This year, she began serving as part of the SGA program planning committee. On the national level, she became a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists after passing the archival certification exam. Additionally, she has served as an editorial assistant for C&RL. Leigh Ann continually seeks to broaden her knowledge of the field. She has attended both Society of American Archivists and Society of Georgia Archivists conferences. Also, she attended an SAA-sponsored workshop on digital projects.