From The Library Director

In June 1994, the University of Scranton formed the Friends of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library. One year later the Friends enjoy more than one hundred members and have just completed an outstanding first year.

 

During the group's inaugural year, the Friends sponsored an exhibition and lecture on William Morris and his Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1898 to produce books in emulation of medieval craftsmanship. The catalogue published for that exhibit is still sought after by libraries and book collectors throughout the country. The Friends brought to Scranton Dr. Charles Fishman, who read his Holocaust poetry and shared with the group his own personal reflections. At the end of May, the group held a very successful used booksale–so successful, in fact, that the Friends decided to begin the establishment of an endowment in their name for the benefit of the Library. The used booksale will become an annual event. Its proceeds and even part of the annual membership fee will go towards this endowment.

 

In the spring of 1996 the Friends will co-sponsor with the Art Gallery Dr., Linda Ledford-Miller's exhibition of textiles. This exhibit will be in conjunction with the Latin American Photography exhibit in the Art Gallery and will be on display from January 5 through March 22 in the Library's Scranton Heritage Room.

 

Also in the spring the Friends of the Weinberg Library plan to co-sponsor with the Lackawanna Historical society an evening of poetry readings which will be a public performance to benefit the television documentary project "Frogs in the Beer Pail." This project will. focus on the fascinating story of the anthracite era. As of this writing, the tentative list of poets includes W. S. Merwin, Jay Parini, Karen Blomain. and Maggie Chelland. Venue and date will be announced.

 

This Fall Semester, the Library will introduce Data Research Associate's (DRA's) newest step in library automation — DRA Find. An evolutionary new prototype workstation, this new tool is a stand-alone PC product that can serve as a search engine for a wide of applications, in addition to providing traditional Online Public Access Catalog capabilities. For example, the product represents the only search feature that lets you search for an item in several databases at once. Other functions within DRA Find include the ability to save and resubmit searches, refer to a dictionary of commonly misspelled words during the search, store search results, optionally access holdings/circulation status information, and perform hypertext searching (click on a particular word or phrase and resubmit a new search on the highlighted item). Because it is fully operational under Microsoft Windows, DRA Find is capable of integrating information used for and retrieved from searching with a wide range of PC applications, including word processors, spreadsheets, databases, desktop publishers, and more. DRA Find also is a fully developed Z39.50 client, which means it can access any other libraries Z39.50 server, and it lets you use the menus and search commands with which you are familiar. Z39.50 is a National Information Standards Organization (NISO) protocol for the exchange of information among, diverse automation systems.

 

DRA Find will be available at a workstation near the Reference Desk on the Library's second floor. Look for the signs. Please test it and give us your feedback.