Dorothy Bodell resigned, leaving the experienced Special Collections staff to assume her reference and access services responsibilities. Her knowledge of local history and genealogical resources was so unique, and her salary quite expensive, so she was not replaced. Instead, additional students were hired to assist with manuscript and archival collection processing, freeing trained staff time for reference services. For the first time Liz Ackermann assumed regular reference desk duties, drawing upon her experience with the collections, but diminishing the time she could spend on other tasks, most notably the Billings Collection inventory. She also supervised a welcome cadre of Chi Delta Alpha service sorority volunteers who worked over 325 hours and contributed immensely to a variety of projects.

Laura Katz Smith did a tremendous job of handling the most bloom that developed in the Rare Book Room when the cooling system malfunctioned in the heat of the summer. She also contributed to the Internet a wealth of information about the unique manuscript collections held within the department. Tamara Kennelly's diligence in archival collecting and Web access (particularly the Lyric Theatre and the Math Department History) greatly improved the presence s well as the content of the University on the Web. Eric Ackermann attempted to create and maintain a user database but was thwarted by PC hardware failure and learning the Macintosh replacement system. Joyce Nester co-presented a session on job rotation and cross training at the VLA Paraprofessional Forum that was attended by nearly 200, and she contributed to planning the very successful "Charting Our Course" staff development day for University Libraries.

The SCP's half-time grade six position (shared with Science Reference) was vacated in March and the two halves were joined into one full time position for the SCP. Peter Haggerty accepted the position, but stayed only six months before successfully applying for a grade 10 in Library Automation. He continues to support the SCP, especially the ETDs, Spectrum, and VA News. Many of his programming initiatives immensely improved access, especially VA News and ETDs.

James Powell continued to split his time between Library Automation and the Scholarly Communications Project, enthusiastically devoting his energy and creativity to experiments in electronic scholarship that evolves into popular new library services. He made outstanding contributions to the Project digital initiatives with his ideas for improving library services to students and faculty as well as to our remote clientele. His book, HTML Plus! went to press this fiscal year.

Gail McMillan continued to split her time between the Scholarly Communications Project and the Special Collections Department. Much of her time was devoted to the ETD project, participating in SURA grant funded travel and training, contributing to the successful FIPSE grant, and drafting technical services processes. (The latter included an article published in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly.) She also taught over 600 faculty about VT Online Class Materials and prepared detailed instructions for faculty and students (both online and in paper). She served as a liaison to faculty interested in the SCP's resources and services, especially online class materials and ejournals/, and she was on call to give virtual tours of the University Libraries digital initiatives.

Tamara Kennelly