Kaila Bussert
Kaila (M.A Near Eastern Studies, 2000) received a George Atiyeh travel award to attend the Middle East Librarians Association meeting in Washington DC in November 2002. Kaila has also interned at the UA Library's Middle East Collection, during which time she learned to catalog Arabic books. She plans to graduate from SIRLS in May 2003.

Carolyn Cox
Carolyn is one third of the way through the SIRLS Master's program. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Globe Public Library, a rural site in Arizona, where she also volunteers. However, her long term interests lie with academic librarianship, in a college or university setting. To this end she has arranged a Summer 2003 internship with Simpson College, a private four year liberal arts college in Indianola, Iowa. Her internship proposal addresses both library instruction and cataloging needs. I look forward to making a contribution, as well as experiencing learning opportunities.

Debbie Griggs
Debbie is a Gates intern completing her second semester here. Her prior experience has mostly been in public libraries, but she is very open to what the world has to offer.

Loren Ito Hardenbergh
Loren won the 2002 Association of Research Libraries' stipend for the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce. This is a national competition and she was one of only four people to get it. Here's a link to a press release about it: http://www.arl.org/arl/pr/divwork2002.html

Smita Joshipura
Smita is completing her fourth semester at SIRLS. She presented a paper on, "Code of Ethics for Collection Developers" in the College and University Libraries Division (CULD) of AzLA in December 2002. While taking classes, Smita is also a Bibliographic Services Specialist at Arizona State University-West.

Toni Olivas
Toni is the current LSO President and both a Knowledge River and Spectrum Scholar. Toni is originally from Phoenix but transferred to Tucson from the School of Information Sciences at the University of Michigan to be part of the Knowledge River program. She is in her second semester here at SIRLS and hopes to graduate in Summer 2003. She hopes to work in public or academic libraries in a reference or management position.

Zoë Smith
Zoë co-presented at AzLA this past December (2002) in Phoenix. The title of her presentation was "Librarians Without Walls: Virtual Teams and Technological Tools for Collaborative Projects in the Library and Beyond." Her co-presenter was Laura Rose Taylor, a colleague from Cline Library, NAU. Here's a link to a blurb about it: http://www.azla.org/2002/p028.html Zoë moved to Tucson from Flagstaff for the SIRLS program and will graduate in August of this year.

Yu Su
Yu Su, a new student in the program in January 2001, will present a poster session at the diversity fair of the ALA Annual Conference in 2002 in Atlanta. It is entitled: "Health care information and cultural issues." She is funded by two grants: Chinese American Library Association Seetoo Travel Scholarship, and the Graduate and Professional Student Travel Grant by the University of Arizona.

Alicia Sugiyama
Alicia is first semester (distance) graduate student in the SIRLS program. She is a recipient of the Arizona Library, Archives and Public Records Department Scholarship for Spring 2003. Alicia attended Mesa Community Colleges under their President's Scholarship in 1987-1989 and then attended ASU under their Arizona Regent's Scholarship from 1988-1992, graduating Magna Cum Laude from ASU in 1992, with a BA in Russian Language. She has volunteered on Monday evenings at the Tempe Public Library since June 2002.

Amy Verheide
Amy received a $1000 Continuing Education Grant from PEO (Philanthropic Education Organization) in October. She has been interning in the archives at the Center for Creative Photography, working on processing, arranging and describing, and creating a finding aid for a collection of Fredrick Sommer's negatives. Amy moved here from Nashville to complete the program at SIRLS.

Anne Webb
Anne has been an intern at the Tucson Museum of Art library. There she has helped complete a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant for a retrospective conversion of previously catalogued items. The new system will transform existing brief MARC records into robust, full MARC records that will enhance search effectiveness and circulation of the collection. She has also integrated a new Arts and Crafts book collection of over 200 titles into the collection and tested the new "Collection Development and De-Selection Policy."