Third Annual Berger Family Technology Transfer Award

for further information contact:

Jo-Ann Michalak, Director of Tisch Library

617-627-3345

Third Annual Berger Family Technology Transfer

Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Medford, MA, December 3, 1999- The third annual Tufts University Berger Family Technology Transfer Award was bestowed on "A Collaboration between Tisch Library and Department of Child Development to Create a Prototype Digital Library Project" submitted by Fred Rothbaum, Professor, Elliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and Nancy Martland, Instructor, Elliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and doctoral candidate, collaborating with a team of Tisch librarians: Edward Oberholtzer, Social Sciences Bibliographer; Laurie Sabol, Reference/Library Instruction Coordinator and Lyn Condron, Head, Catalog Department and Web Manager. The award is a result of a competitive proposal process and provides funding of $50,000.00 annually. The Berger Family established the endowment to retrain library staff to function in the increasingly high technology digital library and also to prepare students and faculty to effectively use this technology. It is believed that the endowment is the first of its kind to train library staff and faculty in new technology.

The award will support the development of an innovative new internet service called WebGuide for Child & Family News (CFN), which will constitute a prototype digital library project and to cultivate library resources needed to create this and related digital library projects. The proposed service, the Child & Family News (CFN) WebGuide, will be an online rating and review guide for students, faculty and the public at large seeking information about children and families. The WebGuide will be modeled on the very successful Tufts University Nutrition Navigator and is intended to solve two major problems experienced by web users: how to quickly find information best suited to their needs and whether to trust the information they find. The WebGuide will be an added feature of CFN, an existing news service developed by faculty at Tufts, to increase the public's interest in and awareness of children's issues by providing high quality, pertinent and newsworthy information to journalists. The WebGuide is a key step in adapting CFN to the needs of students, faculty and the general public. It will integrate several previously segregated bodies of research in child development by subject (psychology, education, advocacy, sociology, anthropology, criminology, health sciences, etc.) and type of source (websites, books, magazines, and newspapers). In addition, the WebGuide users will be directed to websites that describe intervention programs and agencies that provide services related to the issues being researched.

The creation, maintenance and everyday use of the WebGuide will afford new opportunities for students and faculty to work with library staff. The responsibilities of the project library staff will be to: help faculty and students identify and evaluate relevant sites and organize those sites into meaningful topic areas; develop a broader, more scientific understanding of organizational structures that will be needed in the next millennium and offer assistance to other faculty engaged in the selection, evaluation, cataloging and design of sites pertaining to their disciplines. In addition, the project library staff will present a workshop on evaluating websites to disseminate their expertise to Tufts faculty who wish to create their own websites

The Berger Family has been generous donors to Tufts University. Over the years, they have contributed to the renovations of Tisch Library and established an endowed professorship in the College of Engineering. Members of the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment Advisory Board are: Amy Friedlander, the representative of the Berger Family and Associate Director for Research, Center for Information Strategy and Policy in McLean, VA.; Susan Martin, Director of the Lauringer Library, Georgetown University and member of the University Libraries Board of Overseers, Tufts University; Mel Bernstein, Vice President, Arts, Sciences & Engineering; Ioannis Miaoulis, Dean of Engineering; Susan Ernst, Dean of Natural & Social Sciences; Leila Fawaz, Dean of Arts & Humanities; Klaus Miczek, Chair of the Library Committee; Vincent Manno and Kent Portney, Co-Chairs, Faculty Computing Committee; Jo-Ann Michalak, Director of Tisch Library.

A copy of the CFN WebGuide proposal for the Berger grant is located on the Web; in addition, please see the Berger website.

In spring 2000, the Electronic Bolles Archives team, the 1998/99 winner of the Berger award, will report on the results of their project to digitize the history and topography of London to the Advisory Board. The result of all awarded projects will be submitted for publication to professional journals, as well as be highlighted in Tufts print and electronic publications.

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