: For Students, Faculty, and Staff 
Wendy Lehr — the celebrated Twin Cities actor, director, and teacher — headlined the Friends of the Libraries annual celebration May 12, talking about her career in the performing arts. The title of her presentation, appropriately, was “My Life in the Theater: I Always Said Yes!” Lehr was introduced by Friends of the Libraries President Judy Hornbacher.
Lehr was a company member with the Children’s Theatre Company from 1966-1986 and served as associate artistic director and director of education from 1990-1998. Lehr has also worked with many other companies such as the Jungle Theater, the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, Park Square Theatre, Illusion Theater, the History Theatre, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, Theater Latté Da, and the Playwrights’ Center. In 2013, Lehr received the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Twin Cities theater community at the Ivey Awards.
Awards Presentation
The Friends of the Libraries honored and acknowledged several award winners prior to Lehr’s presentation. They included:
Staff Development Grant Winners
Scott Marsalis and Donna Barbour-Talley. Marsalis won a staff development award.
Scott Marsalis, the Liaison Librarian for the School of Social Work, the Department of Family Social Science, and the School of Kinesiology, and Amy Neeser, Research Services and Plant Sciences Librarian, won 2014 Staff Development grants from the Friends.
Marsalis will attend the Qualitative Research Summer Intensive at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This five-day institute will allow him to take three intensive courses to expand his knowledge of qualitative research methods and gain practical skills in conducting and publishing qualitative inquiry. These skills will allow Marsalis to broaden the focus of students and colleagues he works with, as well as to explore new avenues of research.
Neeser will attend the 2014 Digital Humanities conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. This is an annual conference that showcases emerging interdisciplinary research in the creation of digital projects, the preservation of those projects, and the development and use of digital tools for scholarly discovery and publication. Attending the conference will benefit Neeser in her work in research support services in a multitude of ways in order to support digital scholarship on campus.
Outstanding Library Student Employees
Raiana Grieme and Kevin Orren won the 2014 Outstanding Library Student Employee Awards.
Grieme has been working with the Libraries for 2-1/2 years, starting with the Digital Library Services Department as a student scanner. Her expertise has allowed her to serve library and staff researchers through digital order fulfillment. This past year, Grieme was appointed as a lead student worker on the University of Minnesota Natural History Grant, a Legacy-funded initiative, which required coordination between students and staff to track all stages in the digitization process across eight separate archival collections. Grieme’s student leadership, work quality, and willingness to take on new and varied projects with a cheerful attitude and dedication make her an outstanding library student employee.
Orren has worked at the Bio-Medical Library for about 4 years as an Advanced Level Information Technician, providing both library staff and direct patron user support, always in a courteous and efficient manner. Orren has a strong service ethic and can be relied on for assistance when patrons encounter library computer hardware or software problems. The large variety of IT skills Orren has acquired over the years have been invaluable to keeping the department running smoothly, stepping up to fill in whatever job responsibilities he can when staffing is thin. Orren has been nothing but stellar in his eagerness and willingness to help those around him in any way he can.
Student Photo Contest
Student photo contest winners with Donna Barbour Talley, from left: Danielle Robertson, Barbour-Talley, Jordan DeSwarte, and Matthew Oleszczak.
Judges selected 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the 2014 Student Photo Contest, sponsored by the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries. A fourth award, the Student Choice Award, was given to the student who had the most Facebook likes for his or her entry.
The winners were: 1st Place – “Camping” by Danielle Robertson; 2nd Place – “e-Book” by Matthew Oleszczak; Third Place – “Old Books” by Jordan DeSwarte; and Students’ Choice – “Coffee” by Danielle Robertson.
Incoming and outgoing board members
The Friends of the Libraries also honored the outgoing members of the Board of Directors: Aaron Doering, John Cook, Mary Louise Fellows, Pete Magee, and Emily Anne Tuttle.
The Friends also welcomed new board members, John Beard, Edie French, and Kathleen O’Brien.
