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Date 5-8-06
Contact Linda Skupien (228) 806-7718
OCEAN
SPRINGS—Hurricane Katrina recovery of libraries will
join information management and scientific topics on the agenda
for marine librarians meeting at the University of Southern Mississippi
Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL) this week.
SAIL, the Southeastern
Affiliate of the International Association of Aquatic and Marine
Science Libraries and Information Centers, will hold its 16th annual
conference at the GCRL in Ocean Springs, May 9-12. Librarians from
the Atlantic seaboard, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean regions will
attend.
Hosts for the
conference are Joyce Shaw, head librarian at the GCRL's Gunter Library,
and LaGena Fantroy, librarian at National Marine Fisheries Service,
Pascagoula. Both hosting librarians experienced damage to homes
and libraries. Shaw will join Allisa Beck, Southern Miss Gulf Coast
and other Mississippi and Louisiana librarians in a roundtable session
on Katrina recovery.
Shaw said in
October she faced the decision of whether to host the conference
as scheduled at the GCRL. Her co-host lost her library due to flooding,
and the GCRL library sustained damage from more than a foot of storm
surge during the hurricane. Both librarians also had storm damage
to their homes.
"Shortly
after the storm Shaw launched her salvage operations, leading a
small crew of her two library workers and a couple of graduate students
in removing the mud, debris and live animals deposited in the library
by the storm surge," noted Dr. William Hawkins, executive director
of the lab. "That was before any services were restored on
site. She worked for days in extreme heat and with no air conditioning."
By October,
the mud was out but the demolition required for restoration was
still in progress.
"Hosting
a regional conference seemed to be an impossible task," Shaw
said. "But what happened to us can happen to any member of
SAIL. We thought it was important to show other marine librarians
the struggles and rewards of recovery after a terrible natural disaster."
The conference
theme is “Preserving the Past—Focusing on the Future” and is sponsored
by Thomson Scientific and EBSCO Subscription Service, Mississippi-Alabama
Sea Grant Consortium and the Marine Science Institute of the University
of Texas at Austin.
Scientific seminars
are on whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, presented by Dr. Eric
Hoffmayer, GCRL, and local populations of marine mammals, presented
by Dr. Keith Mullin, NOAA Fisheries, Pascagoula.
Other presentations
include talks on the University of Southern Mississippi’s plans
for the Hurricane Katrina Research Center in Hattiesburg, digital
library projects, new developments in online library resources,
and archival collections.
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