Robeson Librarians Published

We are pleased to announce the following publications, by librarians at the Paul Robeson Library.

Vibiana Bowman and Donna Wertheimer wrote “Stacks in the City: A Case Study of an Urban Library Cooperative,” published in Urban Library Journal, vol. 12, #1, Fall 2002. The article discusses the cooperative library agreement among the Camden campuses of Rutgers University, Rowan University, and Camden County College.

The Accidental Webmaster, a new book by Julie Still, is designed for those who manage websites as a volunteer or as only a small part of their job. The focus is on nonprofit, community-based, or small business sites. The book covers the process from setting up and designing the site to maintenance, policy, content, and legal issues. Specialized sites, such as advocacy, political, school and educational, and church or religious sites, are also included.

Congratulations to Vibiana, Julie, and Donna, for finding suitable platforms to share your worthwhile experiences and perspectives with others in the field.

Staffperson's Son's Team
Wins Economics Competition

Congratulations to Neera Sondhi of Alexander Library collection services, whose son Puneet was part of the winning team of Rutgers students that participated in the Second Annual Fed Challenge held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on March 3rd.

Puneet Sondhi was one of two first year students on the seven person team, representing the Rutgers University department of economics against six other schools from the New York/New Jersey area. Other schools represented in the competition included Barnard/Columbia, Stern School of Business at NYU, and Pace University. The focus of the competition was to test each team's "ability to assess current economic conditions and offer an opinion on the appropriate interest rate policy for the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee to pursue." Judges from the Federal Reserve Bank assessed the teams' presentations.

For a fuller description of the competition and the Rutgers' team's winning approach, please see: http://economics.rutgers.edu/misc/FedChallenge.pdf

We look forward to reading about Puneet's future exploits, in the Wall Street Journal!

Hancock Receives NJLA Award

Congratulations to Humanities Librarian Brian Hancock, who received word that he will be awarded “Honorable Mention” by the New Jersey Library Association (NJLA) in its technology innovation competition for 2003.

Brian will receive this award for his work on Plan 9, an experimental operating system from Bell Labs used in the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities, part of the Scholarly Communication Center.

Plan 9 functions on three basic principles: all objects are either files or file systems, communication is over a network, and private namespaces allow their owners to access local and remote processes transparently. Resources are shared using standard, open network protocols and consistent reusable interfaces. Plan 9 is extremely secure, stable, and eminently suitable for collaborative library projects.

Brian will receive his award at a special luncheon on April 1st as part of the NJLA annual convention in East Brunswick

	March 16, 2003 February 16, 2003 The Agenda Archive

Contributors for this issue were Brian Hancock, Gracemary Smulewitz, Julie Still. Contributions for future issues of The Agenda should be sent to Harry Glazer, editor of The Agenda, at hglazer@rci.rutgers.edu.