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April 18, 2007

Meet our newest Library Staff Member, Beatrice Lewin Dumin

 I hope you will all join me in welcoming our newest staff member, Beatrice Lewin Dumin.  Beatrice began as our Circulation, Reserves & Stacks Manager on February 5, 2007.  Beatrice came to us with over 20 years of academic and corporate library experience which spans almost all departments of library support – business, academic public and technical services, both in the U.S. and overseas. Most recently, she managed the Royce Hall Reading Room, a consortium of seven departmental libraries and one Centbeatrice%20a.jpger collection in the Humanities Division. In fact, Beatrice was the Reading Room’s first manager and was hired to establish and develop this beautiful library and its services.  The room is located in the northwest corner of Royce Hall and has an access policy that restricts the room’s use to graduate, postdoctoral and faculty members in the consortium’s departments.

Beatrice was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Canada, Germany and eastern Washington State.  She attended universities in both California and Washington and the Free University of Berlin.  Beatrice received her B.A. from UCLA in 1984, with a double major in History and German (in which she is fluent). 

Beatrice loves cats and enjoys all of the arts, particularly experimental dance, poetry and film, as well as classical forms of music. When Beatrice retires, she plans to move to Kenya and open an orphanage!

We feel pleased and lucky to have recruited Beatrice to this important position in the library. I encourage you to stop by the Circulation Desk, where you will often find her, to say hello.

October 17, 2006

Law Library Staffing Update

We’ve had a number of staffing changes in the Law Library over the past few weeks, so I thought it would be a good time to post an update.

Reference & Research Services:

Cheryl Kelly is joining us as our newest Reference Librarian.  She is a 2003 UCLA Law School graduate and will complete her MLIS degree from UCLA in March of 2007.

Technical Services:

Adam Benitez, who has worked in the law library since 1999 with increasing levels of responsibility, was just promoted to Acquisitions Coordinator. He was recently profiled in the "Meet your Library Staff" section of this blog.  Alejandro Sanchez Nunez worked as the student Interlibrary Loan Assistant in the Access Services Department since 2003. He recently graduated from UCLA and was hired as the Library’s Mail Assistant.

Access & Information Services:

Michelle Gorospe, a UCLA undergraduate, is filling in as our Stacks Supervisor on a part time basis.  Michelle had a student position with us and previous law firm experience before being promoted to this position.  Sangeeta Pal, formerly our Circulation, Reserves & Stacks Manager, has accepted our new position of Public Services Projects Coordinator as of October 16.  Her primary responsibilities will include heading up special projects for all of the Public Services departments (Access & Information Services, Research & Reference, Scholarly Support & R.A. program and Collection Development), as well as assisting the library administration. Sangeeta will also continue her role in working with the faculty on the use of library-related technologies, such as ERes and digital recorders.

Please join me in congratulating everyone on their new positions.

October 11, 2006

Meet Adam Benitez, Acquisitions Coordinator

Adam Benitez, who was recently promoted to Acquisitions Coordinator for the library, has worked in the Technical Services department of the library since February 1999. He received his B.A. in Psychology from UCLA, while working at the East Asian Library as a student assistant. After graduating from UCLA, Adam intended to pursue a Master’s Degree in clinical psychology, but after a semester at Cal. State Dominguez, he decided to return to the library world and got a job in the law library as the Mail Assistant. He was soon promoted to Bindery Assistant and then Bindery Supervisor, a position he held for five years.

When Adam first started working here, he was the lead singer in a band, which took up a lot of his time (read more about Adam’s band in his August blog posting). Once the band broke up, he decided it was time to settle down and go back to school. Since Adam always really enjoyed his work in the library and thought it was “a lot of fun,” he decided a career in librarianship was the way to go and is now working on his Master’s in Library and Information Science at UCLA’s GSEIS, which he expects to obtain by next June. He is working full time while getting his degree and finds it exciting that he is able to apply what he learns in school to the work setting. Once Adam graduates, he and his wife hope to start a family.

Pictured are Adam & his band playing on the Powell steps during the 1999 L.A. Times Festival of Books.

Not only is Adam applying his education to work, but he found it inspiring his music. Adam has just about finished six songs which feature library-related lyrics. He will soon begin recording them in his home studio and plans to play all of the instruments on the tracks: drums, bass, guitar, keyboard, harmonica and more (as you may have guessed, Adam comes from a very musically talented family). He hopes to market these songs to “every library in the U.S.” Some of these titles may be kind of library “inside jokes,” but here they are:

  • Doing the DDC [note: Think Dewey Decimal]—A swing style tune
  • Authority Control – “Cow punk”
  • Digital Resource – electronica
  • ILL from Hell – hard rock
  • Livin' in the Library – a ballad.  Here are a few lyrics from this tune:

Library, I’m livin’ in the Library

What is life, what is love, what does it all mean?
The reference librarian paused to think
Try BX 293 on the third floor
Browse around and you’re sure to find so much more

If Adam is willing to share, perhaps we’ll feature one of these tunes in an upcoming posting….check back often to find out!

September 12, 2006

Meet Rhonda Lawrence, Head of Cataloging

Rhonda LawrenceRhonda Lawrence, the Library’s Head of Cataloging, has worked in the UCLA Law Library since 1989.  As the co-author of three editions of Cataloging Legal Literature: a manual on AACR2R and Library of Congress subject headings for legal materials, Rhonda is one of the foremost authorities in American legal cataloging. She is also very active and well-known in national library associations.

Law librarianship is a second career for Rhonda.  Fresh out of college with her B.S. in English and a minor in Inner City Education from Iowa State, she taught junior and senior high school English for four years at an inner city school in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Rhonda originally decided to go to library school to become a school librarian.  But she entered the UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Fall 1978, just after California’s Proposition 13 was passed, which made employment prospects for school librarians pretty dismal. While in library school she became interested in government documents and legal research after working at the now defunct Public Affairs Service on the A-level of the Young Research Library.

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