NASIG Newsletter

25:2 (2010:05) Checking In

Checking In
Kurt Blythe, Columns Editor

[Note: New members, please consider reporting the story of how you came to be a member of NASIG.  You may submit items about yourself to Kurt Blythe at kcblythe@email.unc.edu.  Please include your e-mail address.]

New to NASIG is Sandra Brady, who is looking forward to a busy June when she will be attending NASIG for the first time and will also be changing her focus at her current library from education to electronic resource management.  While Sandra may be new to NASIG and the world of serials, she is not new to librarianship having spent ten years in the field of medical librarianship.

New not only to NASIG but also to librarianship is Melissa I. Cardenas-Dow, who joined NASIG in October 2009 after beginning work as the technical services/reference librarian at the University of Redlands Armacost Library in July 2009.  A graduate of San Jose State University’s SLIS, Melissa joined NASIG in recognition of “serials [being] such an important aspect of technical services librarianship.”  Melissa adds, “It is vital for me to improve my professional knowledge and practice by joining NASIG. I am interested in continuing my professional education and NASIG provides a great number of opportunities for me to do so.  I also look forward to NASIG conference 2010.  Palm Springs is not very far from Redlands!”

Contact Melissa at:

Melissa I. Cardenas-Dow
Technical Services/Reference Librarian
Armacost Library
University of Redlands
1249 E. Colton Ave.
Redlands, CA 92374
Phone: 909-748-8089

Derek Reece, on the other hand, has worked as a metadata librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington since 2008.  He writes, “I spend most of my time managing electronic serials in the catalog and link resolver.  I gravitated towards cataloging work due to my interests in online access to library resources and digital collections.  My supervisor suggested NASIG as a good organization to keep up with the changing serials world.  I am looking forward to networking and learning more about serials through NASIG membership.”

Also learning of NASIG from a colleague is Carmel Yurochko, who came to our organization on the advice of her former acquisitions librarian, also a member.  “After a bit of research,” Carmel writes, “I decided that NASIG is ‘the’ serials organization and I needed to join.  After working with serials for many, many years, it only made good sense.”

Carmel goes on to write:

In 1985, I started working at Duquesne University as the Serials Control clerk.  My main goal was to get tuition remission for my sons – plain and simple.  At that time, the university had only print and microform formats and I did the check-in manually.  The majority of questions asked about serials dealt with late or missing issues.  Then the library went online with our first ILS.  While attempting to straighten out our holdings, I discovered that working in serials can be a lot like detective work.  Understanding the twists and turns of serials (such as title changes, splitting into parts, returning to the original titles, reuniting the parts) all became interesting to me.  My sons graduated and after earning my MLIS in 2002, I became the official serials librarian.  As the serials world morphed into electronic journals, aggregated databases, databases, link resolvers and so on, I morphed into the serials/electronic resources Librarian.  It is still a lot like detective work, but now the questions are, “Why is this not working?”, “What happened to the access we had yesterday?” and “Why is this not in full-text?”

I was once asked, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in periodicals?”  I think the real question is why do I stay in serials?  I think I like the challenge!

Carmel may be reached at:

Carmel Yurochko
Serials/Electronic Resources Librarian
Psychology Dept. Liaison
Gumberg Library
Duquesne University
600 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
Phone: 412-396-5233
Fax: 412-396-5639
E-mail: yurochko@duq.edu