Co-Library Staff News – Melvyl and A&I Transition Positions

The CDL is very pleased to announce four staff appointments that bring extraordinary expertise and UC experience to the Melvyl and A&I transition projects over the next two years.  Please join us in expressing deep appreciation to these individuals and to the Berkeley library, home to three of them, for these critical contributions toward the success of the upcoming transitions.  Please read below for details about:

Ellen Meltzer – Senior Associate for Education, Usability, and Outreach
Chrisina Campbell – Melvyl Union Catalog Implementation Project Manager
Ann Jensen – Melvyl Union Catalog Implementation Services Team Lead
Karen Coyle – Melvyl Union Catalog Database & Technology Team Lead

a. Ellen Meltzer

Ellen Meltzer has accepted the position of Senior Associate for Education, Usability, and Outreach, effective March 15, 2000.  In this two-year, full-time position, Ellen will lead CDL and systemwide collaboration to develop education programs, outreach materials, and usability testing of the new systems.  She will serve on the A&I Transition Steering Committee and will lead the Usability and Education subgroup of the Melvyl transition project.

Since 1993 Ellen has been the Head of UC Berkeley’s Teaching Library, which includes responsibility for the Media Resources Center, the Library Graphics Service, and the California Heritage K-12 Outreach Project.  Recent highlights of Ellen’s wide-ranging campus and UC roles include leading Berkeley’s Public Electronic Access Systems Committee, serving on the campus Advisory Committee on Teaching, Learning and Technology, and on the Commission on Undergraduate Education.  Ellen is a Past President of LAUC Systemwide, and serves on the CDL’s Education Working Group.

b. Cristina Campbell

Cristina Campbell has accepted the position of Project Manager for the Melvyl Union Catalog Implementation project effective March 12, 2000.  In this two-year, full-time position, she will coordinate the overall project and the three functional teams designated to focus on the major aspects of the project: Database Development and Technology, led by Karen Coyle; Usability and Education, led by Ellen Meltzer; and Services led by Ann Jensen.

Cristina is currently the Chief Librarian of the UCB Public Health Library.  She brings twenty years of experience in various management roles at the Public Health Library, including managing contract services for the California Department of Public Health.  She has held leadership positions in librarywide activities related to collection development, interlibrary lending and document delivery, and public services.  Recently, she chaired the Public Services Advisory Group for Public Services, which worked with the Systems Office on the development of Pathfinder, the web version of GLADIS.  She has been very active in the Special Libraries Association, serving as the President and the Strategic Planning chair of the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, and she received the chapter’s Professional Achievement Award in September.  In this capacity, she managed a number of programmatic and publishing activities.

Her CDL related activities include serving as the MEDLINE liaison and the resource liaison for Wiley Interscience.

c. Ann Jensen

Ann Jensen will lead the Services team for the Melvyl Union Catalog Implementation project effective April 1, 2000.   This team will be responsible for designing and implementing the user interface and associated services such as Request.  Over the next two years Ann will spend 40% of her time in this role, while remaining head of the Astronomy/Mathematics/Statistics Library at UC Berkeley.

Ann brings extensive public services experience to the project, including positions in the Kresge Engineering Library and Chemistry Library, and chair of the Public Service Advisory Group for Public Services at UCB.  She has been active in instruction and training, participating in science instruction with The Teaching Library, and conducting various faculty seminars and staff training sessions.

In addition, she has been involved in a number of significant CDL activities.  She was a member of the RFP Evaluation Steering Committee that evaluated vendor responses to the RFP for the Melvyl Union Catalog.  She is currently the CDL Resource Liaison for the American Mathematical Society, and chaired the INSPEC Implementation Task Force when INSPEC was loaded on the Melvyl system.

d. Karen Coyle

Karen Coyle will lead the Database and Technology Team for the Melvyl Union Catalog Implementation Project effective immediately.  Karen and the team will focus on the transition of the database and the record input processes for the Melvyl Catalog as well as the incorporation of California Periodicals Database records into it.

Karen has been part of the “MELVYL family” since 1981.  Early on she worked on input to the Union Catalog, and lately has been one of the primary developers on the locally mounted A&I databases.  Her study of the feasibility of a virtual union catalog replacement for MELVYL was published in D-Lib in March, 2000.  She was deeply involved in the development of the RFP for the next generation union catalog and was on the RFP steering committee.   Karen is a well-known expert in library systems and metadata and has served on MARBI and Dublin Core committees.  She is currently on the JSC e-book task force and is chairing the SOPAG committee on privacy in the electronic environment.  She has published numerous articles and is the author of the ALA book “Coyle’s Information Highway Handbook”.