“Sally’s personality and her knowledge of this library will be very much missed,” said Susan Arnold, director of the Health Sciences Library. “She’s always so cheerful, and she is always willing to pitch in. That’s something I really appreciated about her.”

Dean of Libraries Frances O’Brien, Sally Brown, and Health Sciences Library Director Susan Arnold.

Brown started at the Health Sciences Library in 1975 after moving to Morgantown a year earlier with her husband, Paul, who accepted a position in the Department of Physiology. She began her career in the acquisitions department.

“Eventually, I began to be the person people gravitated to for reference help because I knew the books that were there,” Brown said. “I knew where they were on the shelf, and I knew the books that were on order.”

Brown became a reference assistant in 1995 after earning her Master’s in Library Science from the University of South Carolina in Columbia. In 2000, Terry Burton, former director of the Health Sciences Library, named her head of reference.

Reference librarian was the ideal job for Brown, who liked the academic atmosphere and enjoyed helping people with reference questions whatever the complexity. She found it rewarding to find needed information and to be able to say that she had done her best.

It helped that she had an interest in the research being conducted at WVU and enjoyed the intellectual challenge. She made a practice of reading academic journals and the popular press in order to understand the latest developments and findings.

“Working with physicians and researchers made me read about what they were doing in their fields,” Brown said. “It widened my outlook of what went on in this building and in research in general.”

During her tenure, Brown saw technology transform the Library’s landscape as the Internet brought the online catalog and electronic resources.

Brown finds it interesting that the initial move away from the physical card catalog was met with some frustration. Researchers liked to take their time poring over a section of a catalog drawer. Today the card catalog is an unknown and speed and accessibility of information have taken its place.

Still, the basics never changed.

“It’s the same reference questions as in the old days, but instead of floor to floor we go from database to database,” Brown said.

Despite her love of learning, she considers people as the best part of her long career. Over the years, Brown gained friends in all departments throughout the entire Health Science Center.

“It’s the people,” Brown said. “It’s about the relationships you form over the years that make your job what it is. It’s what you remember.”

The Health Sciences Library is where she became good friends with co-worker Jean Evans. Brown remembers seeing Evans before starting her job at the library. While her husband was in his final interview for his job, Brown walked around the Basic Sciences Building and saw Evans in the library laughing and joking with someone.

“I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to work with someone like her?’” Brown said. “I did, and it was.”

She also remembers a group she called the “three Ms” – former Health Sciences Library Director Robert Murphy, Marge Abel and Marie Kidd – and credits them for keeping the library running.

She laughed as she recalled an incident in which Abel assisted a physician with a database search. After he left with his results, Abel kept working and discovered a few additional articles.

Brown said: “He was walking down the hall, and there was Marge running after him with a printout yelling, “Wait, I found something better.”

There were also regular patrons who liked to work with Brown. Dr. Rumy Hilloowalla, a School of Medicine professor emeritus, worked with her on the History of Medicine collection for many years.

“She’s always been extremely helpful. I’m sorry to see her retire,” Hillowalla said.

Many of her former colleagues share that sentiment.

“Sally has been a mentor and a mom to many in the library—always willing to listen and give advice,” Arnold said. “We’ll miss her smile and her laugh.”

Although Brown expects to miss library routine, she’s looking forward to retirement’s spontaneity.

These are divided into six sections which can be viewed by selecting images from the navigation bar on the left. Select a small image of the card from these pages to display the outside and inside of each card at its actual size.

You can view the exhibit at: http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/exhibits/cards/.

For Dead Week, the Downtown Campus Library will open at 1 p.m. Sunday and remain open until 8 p.m. Friday. The Evansdale Library will open at 9 a.m. Sunday and remain open until 8 p.m. Friday.

For Finals Week, the Downtown Campus and Evansdale libraries will open at noon Sunday, Dec. 13, and remain open until 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 18.

For more information, check out the Libraries’ calendar:
www.libraries.wvu.edu/hours

Nominations will be accepted from WVU administration, faculty, and staff and must be submitted on the official nomination form by February 15, 2010.

Nomination forms and more info: www.libraries.wvu.edu/awards

The academic world is slowly waking up to this new paradigm, and open-access journals are cracking the rigid scholarly publishing system.

Traditionally, reading the latest research requires academic libraries to pay high subscription fees for electronic journals that are available exclusively to students, faculty, and staff and for paper versions housed on campus.

However, more eyes than usual will be able to read WVU’s latest research about infant health thanks to how the researchers chose to publish their findings.

After Dr. Giovanni Piedimonte and his team recently made discoveries about how respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) affects infants, they published their work in PLoS (Public Library of Science) ONE, an open-access journal. That choice made their findings available to anyone with access to the Internet.

“If a paper is accepted, everyone on the planet can access the paper with no charge,” Piedimonte said. “They can be in Pakistan or Afghanistan and still be able to read the paper. The audience is enormous.”

Open-access journals are peer-reviewed and provide free, online access to their articles. Rather than charging subscription fees to readers or libraries, they cover their costs through publication fees to authors. And because of limited copyright and licensing restrictions, the articles are available to anyone to download, copy, and distribute for research purposes.

The wider audience maximizes the research impact. Susan Arnold, Director of the Health Sciences Library, said that in 2008 the British Medical Journal reported that open-access articles received a significantly higher number of downloads from more visitors than their traditional subscription counterparts. An article published recently in Science showed that when articles were made freely available within two years of publication, their citations increased by almost 20 percent.

Those statistics have held true for Piedimonte. In just six weeks, according to PLoS records, Piedimonte’s research had been viewed about 630 times and more than 90 people had downloaded it. Piedimonte said a previous paper by his research team had more than 3,000 readers. Two of the Public Library of Science journals, PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, have been credited with a double-digit impact factor.

“The visibility and impact you can achieve by publishing in a good open-access journal like PLoS is far superior to other journals of the same type,” Piedimonte said.

The additional visibility helps researchers to fulfill WVU’s mission as a land grant university. In Piedimonte’s case, pediatricians throughout West Virginia and the world will better understand a potentially fatal respiratory infection because they can read the article.

“What if you are a physician who works in an underserved area or in a rural area? The open-access medium allows these people to be in touch with cutting edge research in clinical medicine in real time in a way they wouldn’t be able to otherwise,” Piedimonte said.

Dr. Richard Crout, Associate Dean for Research in the School of Dentistry and Professor in the Department of Periodontics, has witnessed the effect of a lack of access to new research on a trip to the Soviet Union. Crout talked with a doctor in Kiev, Ukraine, who had spent four years studying an issue not knowing that it had already been resolved.

“We all can learn from what other people are doing,” Crout said. “If it’s something similar, we work together.”

Another advantage of open-access publishing is a shorter length of time between acceptance and publication. Piedimonte is still waiting for a traditional journal to publish an article that he submitted two months before submitting his RSV article.

“This benefits the entire research community by accelerating dissemination of research findings,” Arnold said.

The boost, though, extends beyond the labs and professors’ offices to undergraduates and others new to research. Linda Blake, Electronic Journals Librarian, said the typical freshman or sophomore lacks savvy research skills and tries to avoid going to great lengths to find information they need. They may know Interlibrary Loan exists, but they want the article immediately, not in a few days.

“The human inclination is to go the easiest route,” Blake said. “If the article is right there, they will use it rather than pursue something that is not easily available.”

WVU and the WVU Libraries have actively advocated for open-access publishing. The Libraries, the Office of Information Technology, and the Office of Academic Affairs and Research collaborated to establish an institutional repository containing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), Electronic undergraduate Honors Theses (EHTs) and the Electronic Scholarly Research Archives (ESRA), a faculty research portal.
Along with bringing nationally known speakers to campus, the Libraries sponsored an Open Access Day in 2008 and will sponsor a weeklong program from Oct. 19-23. For more information about Open-Access Week: www.libraries.wvu.edu/open-access.

To encourage faculty to publish their work in open-access journals, the WVU Libraries purchased institutional memberships in BioMed Central and Public Library of Science which reduce the required publication fees for WVU faculty researchers. The Libraries also negotiated favorable terms for WVU authors in Oxford University Press open-access journals.

“Open-access is one of the WVU Libraries’ newer initiatives,” Libraries Dean Frances O’Brien said. “We’re interested in improving access to research. We know these issues are complex and it will take a lot of people working together to change the system, but I think it’s an appropriate direction for a land-grant university.”

Penny Pugh

Presenting the honor during the organization’s fall conference, the Awards Committee praised Pugh for her accomplishments as a reference librarian and as a leader in WVLA.

“Her strong work ethic, her depth of knowledge, outstanding leadership and willingness to find solutions through collaborative work are well-known attributes,” the nomination letter reads. “Penny has made remarkable contributions to libraries through her work.”

Pugh came to the WVU Libraries Reference Department as a staff librarian in 1986 and worked her way up to head of reference. She credits her career choice to a love of reading that ignited when a bookmobile stopped at her elementary school. The decision solidified while she was an undergraduate at WVU.

“I became enamored with the idea of libraries as a place where knowledge is stored so every new generation doesn’t have to start fresh,” Pugh said. “We can build on and advance our civilization. We don’t have to invent penicillin again.”

Pugh has strived to help keep the WVU Libraries as a valuable resource in the constantly changing technological world. When she started her career, index cards and the thick green volumes of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature were staples for any good researcher. Today, users can read electronic journals from home and chat online with librarians.

Keeping on the forefront, Pugh provided leadership to develop the WVU Libraries’ first Web site and helped to create the Reference Online page, a listing of electronic resources. She has served as chair of the electronic resources committee for the past 15 years. She remains a consistent innovator, adding resources such as an instant message service, Ask-a-Librarian, and an application that allows users to text themselves book call numbers.

Over the years, Pugh has also gained a reputation as an outstanding teacher. She has taught numerous sections of a library course, ULIB 101: Introduction to Library Research; has given lectures for credit courses in several disciplines; and has offered many faculty workshops.

Most recently, she worked with the WVU Writing Center and Academic Resource Centers to bring free tutoring sessions to the Downtown Campus Library five evenings every week.

During her term as WVLA president from 2004-2005, Pugh worked to increase membership and produce outstanding fall and spring conferences. She also served as the spokesperson for the organization when dealing with the media and elected officials in Charleston. She previously served as chair of WVLA’s Academic Division and as a member of the Executive Board.

“I’m passionate about libraries, and I’m proud to advocate for them through my work in the association. Libraries are institutions that embody the best of our society, and librarians from all types of libraries share common values – literacy, education, and learning,” Pugh said. “I would hate to live in a society where there were no libraries.”

On Oct. 16, 1859, the abolitionist and a small band of loyal followers seized control of the Harpers Ferry Armory in a plot to build an army to overthrow the South and free the slaves. Although his plan failed, the incident ignited a debate about slavery that spread across the nation and divided the country.

John Brown on Trial, sketched by David Hunter Strother

“John Brown’s Raid is one of the most poignant events in American history,” said John Cuthbert, curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection. “Perhaps more than any other single act, it led to the outbreak of the Civil War. John Brown has been cited as the person who contributed more than any other to the start of the Civil War.”

The exhibit contains original sketches and eyewitness accounts by David Hunter Strother, a popular artist and writer of the day. A member of the local aristocracy, Strother had unique access to Brown throughout the ordeal. Arriving in Harpers Ferry within 36 hours of the raid, he gained close contact with Brown and some of his co-conspirators.

Strother saw them lying wounded on the floor of a makeshift jail, before they received medical attention. And, even before authorities had the chance to extensively question Brown, Strother talked with him about his failed plot. He made many sketches of Brown and his men at that time and then later during Brown’s trial and execution.

“David Hunter Strother was a gifted writer and artist,” Cuthbert said. “If you wanted to find one person to document what happened there, I don’t think you could find a better person than Strother.”

A traveling version of the exhibit is currently on view at the Jefferson County Museum in Charles Town.

Connect to ebrary from the Libraries trial database web site.

And please let us know what you think. Use the Feedback Form on the web. Your comments are always welcome.

Each year, groups around the country seek to ban books from library shelves for reasons such as violence, sexuality, and profanity. In the past, classic works of literature like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Grapes of Wrath have been targeted by book banners. In 2008, more than 500 titles were challenged.

Visit the Downtown Campus Library’s Banned Book Week exhibits to learn more about banned books. And read a banned book this week. For suggested titles, visit Challenged or Banned Classics.

To see where book censorship occurred in 2008, visit:
http://bannedbooksweek.org/Mapofbookcensorship.html.

John Cuthbert, WVRHC Curator, and Harold M. Forbes, Rare Books Collection Curator, will speak as part of an exhibit titled “American Masterpieces from the Daywood Collection,” which focuses on the contributions of Arthur and Ruth Dayton.

“The Daytons were likely the most significant collectors of fine art and rare books in the history of our state. They were also generous philanthropists,” Cuthbert said. “Their legacy lives on in the collections of the WVU Libraries and the Huntington Museum of Art as well as in the Daywood Foundation, which Mrs. Dayton founded to provide support for higher education and other worthwhile endeavors.”

Arthur Dayton’s book collection serves as the foundation for the WVU Libraries’ Rare Books Collection, which is the finest in the state. The couple donated their art collection to the Huntington Museum. Cuthbert will talk about the Daytons, their heritage and legacy while Forbes will focus on the rare book collection.

Arthur Dayton, born in Philippi in 1887, received his associate’s and law degree from WVU and went on to earn a master’s of arts from Yale University. He practiced law briefly in his hometown before moving to Charleston.

Over the years, the booklover amassed a collection containing several rare treasures, including multiple first-editions by Mark Twain and other American authors, first editions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d, Shakespeare’s four Folio editions, and the Nuremberg Chronicle, which, printed in 1492, chronicled the world’s history up to that point.

The lecture begins at 2 p.m. and is open to the public. A reception will follow.