Spring/Summer 1996 Smithsonian Institution Libraries page 6

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Visitors to the Libraries

ALA Library Fellows Program

The American Libraries Association Library Fellows Program selected Luis Oporto-Ordoņez, Director of the Department of Information and Scientific Documentation at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia, to be a Library Fellow at the Smithsonian Libraries. During his fellowship from October 1995 to January 1996, Sr. Oporto-Ordoņez evaluated Libraries' holdings on Bolivia, worked with staff in the Gifts and Exchange Program of Acquisition Services to develop better exchange lists with Latin American partners, initiated an Luis Oporto-Odenez and Mary Augusta Thomasexchange program with his home museum, and reviewed materials in the Anthropology Branch Library. He used the Internet extensively to establish contact with institutions holding Andean and Amazonian collections and to exchange information on regional U. S. studies. Mary Augusta Thomas, Assistant Director, Management and Systems, who served as mentor to Sr. Oporto-Ordoņez, noted, "As an expert in his field, he deepened our subject expertise [with his reports]. His enthusiasm ... was contagious. It made us look at what we do with "new eyes," both to enhance appreciation and to recognize difficulties." The ALA Library Fellows Program, funded by the U.S. Information Agency, has brought librarians from other countries to U.S. libraries since 1993.

Provost O'Connor Previews WWW Pilot Project

Tom Garnett with Barbara Smith and Provost Dennis O'Connor.Provost J. Dennis O'Connor and Director Barbara J. Smith visited the Libraries' World Wide Web Home Page in March when Systems Department head Tom Garnett conducted a preview of the Libraries pilot re-publishing project. Scheduled to go online in May, the pilot project is a re-publication of John C. Ewers's "Hair Pipes in Plains Indian Adornment," a 1957 study published by the Bureau of American Ethnology. Garnett also gave a demonstration of the Libraries' exhibition, Science and the Artist's Book, and the Home Pages of several branch libraries. During the Provost's first visit to the Libraries, he met with assistant directors and Dr. Smith over lunch.

DEPARTMENT HEAD NAMED

Sherry Kelley Sherry Kelley has been appointed Head of the Cataloging Services Department where she oversees planning and management of all cataloging and indexing activities of the 18-branch system. She came from University of California Los Angeles Library where she was head of the University Research Library Cataloging Department. She has worked at the Library of Congress, at Cornell University Libraries, and taught at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. She earned her M.L.S. at Syracuse University, her B.A. at Indiana University, and studied historical bibliography at University College, London. She has made a number of professional presentations at national meetings, served on task forces and advisory groups for a variety of specialized projects, and has recently been a contributing author for Guidelines for Bibliographic Description of Interactive Multimedia.

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