by Katina Strauch
Peace to you all after the horrors of last week here in Charleston. The pain is palpable here. We all weep for what has happened.
Cynthia Hurd was the branch manager of the St. Andrews Regional Library. Prior to that she had been regional manager of the John L. Dart branch from 1990 to 2011. Cynthia also worked nights and weekends at the Addlestone Library of the College of Charleston. She was our longest-serving part-time librarian, having been at the College since the 1990s, when our library was still housed in the Robert Scott Small Building. She was warm, cheerful, and collegial always. There was no question or issue that Cynthia would not tackle. We will miss her smiles and can-do attitude. We also mourn for the eight other innocent people who were only attending a prayer service at their church. These were such good people worshipping and reading the Bible. What a madman this poor boy was. Horrible. Words are not sufficient to express the sorrow we all feel. May they all find peace and serenity. Thank each and every one of you who wrote, emailed, or called me personally to express sympathy and condolences and horror.
A fund has been established to help the families of the victims. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley announced the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund this past Thursday, stating that the city had already pledged $5,000. Click on this ATG NewsChannel announcement for further details and to make a contribution of your own.
We must move on but still remember. The June print Against the Grain will be at ALA but I will not. Tom Gilson will be in San Francisco for ATG and the Charleston Conference. I am sure that many of you will see him.
More upbeat news! IFLA and Brill have announced that the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), from the Netherlands, has been selected as this year’s winner of the IFLA/Brill Open Access Award.
The IFLA/Brill Open Access Award was created in 2013 for initiatives in the area of open access monograph publishing. Earlier winners were Open Book Publishers (2013) and Knowledge Unlatched (2014). DOAB, the Directory of Open Access Books, is the discovery service for open access books.
DOAB provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed books published under an OA business model, with links to the full text at the publisher’s website.
DOAB is a service of OAPEN Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to
Open Access monographs. DOAB has grown steadily since its launch in 2012. April 2015, the directory reached a milestone with 100 OA publishers listed and over 2800 books included.