~Emerging librarians receive funding for travel and conference expenses~

Birmingham, Ala. – June 8, 2011 – In co-sponsorship with the American Library Association (ALA), EBSCO awarded seven librarians $1,000 scholarships to attend the ALA Annual Conference June 23-28, 2011 in New Orleans.

The seven scholarship recipients are Megan Hodge, circulation supervisor, Randolph-Macon College, Glen Allen, Va.; Win Shih, director of integrated library systems, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Tina Chan, reference/instruction librarian, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, N.Y.; Miranda C. Rodriguez, instruction librarian, The Catholic University of America, D.C.; Carrie L. Waibel, executive assistant, Bexley Public Library, Westerville, Ohio; Elissia Buell, librarian, San Diego; and Jonathan Chima Ogugua, senior librarian, Federal University of Technology-Owerri, Owerri, Nigeria.

As part of the application process, EBSCO asked librarians to write an essay on the topic: "How will attending the ALA Annual Conference contribute to your professional development?” The recipients’ essays offer a variety of examples, including networking with other attendees, fulfilling ALA committee duties, broadening understanding of new library products and technologies, attending workshops to become aware of evolving trends in libraries and developing new services to better meet patron needs. One librarian winner, Ogugua, is traveling from Nigeria to the United States for the first time.

“I can't tell you how grateful I am to be selected as one of the scholarship recipients,” says Hodge. “Without this scholarship, attending Annual would have been a severe financial hardship. While I'm in New Orleans, I will present the results of my Emerging Leader project in a poster session, give another poster presentation, serve on an NMRT/LLAMA panel about leadership, and give a JobLIST Placement Center presentation in addition to seeking a new position after recently graduating from library school.”

The applications were judged by a jury designated by ALA. Jury members were John J. Meier, science librarian, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pa.; Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., information research specialist, Library of Congress, D.C.; Elizabeth Nelson, knowledge analyst, UOP, LLC, Woodstock, Ill.; Georgie Lynn Donovan, coordinator, bibliographic services, Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.; and Norice Lee, department head of access services, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, N.M.

EBSCO and ALA representatives will host a breakfast honoring the scholarship recipients during the conference on Sunday, June 26.
EBSCO has sponsored scholarships to ALA conferences for more than 15 years, awarding scholarship money to be used for conference registration, travel and expenses. EBSCO will continue the tradition of awarding librarians again in 2012.
About ALA
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit professional organization of more than 65,000 librarians, library trustees, and other friends of libraries dedicated to providing and improving library services and promoting the public interest in a free and open information society: www.ala.org

About EBSCO
Established in 1944, EBSCO is the world’s leading information agent providing consultative services and cutting-edge technology for managing and accessing quality content, including print and e-journals, e-packages, research databases, eBooks and more. Now more than ever libraries and research organizations are looking for new ways to manage their collections more efficiently. EBSCO has developed the most comprehensive “e” discovery and management solutions, offering unparalleled integration to help librarians save time and money while empowering their users.

EBSCO serves clients in more than 200 countries through our 31 offices worldwide with more than 140 librarians on staff. To learn more about EBSCO’s products and services, visit www.ebsco.com.

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Contact:
Heather Klusendorf
Media Relations Coordinator
EBSCO Corporate Communications
www.twitter.com/EBSCOInfoSvcs
hklusendorf@ebsco.com
205.995.1539

Cheryl Malden
ALA Program Officer
312-280-3247

DUBLIN, Ohio, June 7, 2011—A record for a book accessible online, titled Task-oriented and Purposeful Robot-Assisted Therapy, marked the 10 millionth record added to WorldCat via the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. The record was harvested into WorldCat by staff at InTech, an open access publisher located in Rijeka, Croatia.

The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway provides those with an OAI-compliant repository, like InTechOpen, with a Web-based, self-service tool that makes it possible to self-harvest the metadata of their unique digital content to WorldCat to gain broader visibility.

The WorldCat record links to a PDF copy of a book available from InTech’s online repository. The book was written in 2007 by a group of eight researchers: Michelle J. Johnson; Kimberly J. Wisneski; John Anderson; Dominic Nathan; Elaine Strachota; Judith Kosasih; Jayne Johnston; and Roger O. Smith. The brief record can be viewed at: www.worldcat.org/oclc/715271162 and links to: www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/task-oriented_and_purposeful_robo....

Matko Hrvatin, InTech’s Library and Information Service Coordinator, said InTech chose to start harvesting their records to WorldCat using the Gateway because “WorldCat is the world’s largest library community. With its search engine for online catalogs of publications from all over the world, WorldCat is delivering local and global resources to users in a single search. Also, WorldCat is providing valuable and quality cataloging services based on OAI metadata harvesting protocol with a unique user interface for metadata modifications.”

“When talking to our authors, we are often asked if our publications are available on WorldCat, which proves how much partnering with OCLC’s WorldCat is allowing us to offer our authors and visitors a service with an added value,” Hrvatin said.

InTech’s online repository, InTechOpen, is an Open Access repository of InTech’s books and journal articles covering the fields of science, technology and medicine. All articles are immediately accessible for download and instantly readable through their online reading platform. At present, the articles are in PDF only, but InTech is currently working on the enhancement of their publishing workflow, and their content will soon be available in a variety of digital formats.

InTechOpen also supports the OAI Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAI-PMH Version 2.0) as a data provider, which enables libraries to harvest metadata from InTech’s online repository and easily add their publications to the library's central database.

WorldCat is a database of bibliographic information built continuously by OCLC libraries around the world since 1971. Each record in the WorldCat database contains a bibliographic description of a single item or work and a list of institutions that hold the item. Millions of records link directly to digital information resources. Institutions share these records, using them to create local catalogs, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work.

Since 1971, more than 230 million records have been added to WorldCat, spanning more than 6,000 years of recorded knowledge, from about 4800 B.C. to the present. This unique collection of information encompasses records in a variety of formats—books, e-books, serials, sound recordings, images, musical scores, maps, visual materials, mixed materials and computer files. Like the knowledge it describes, WorldCat grows steadily. Every second, library members add seven records to WorldCat.

Once records have been added to WorldCat, they are discoverable on the Web through popular search and partner sites, and through www.worldcat.org.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.