March 14, 2005
Prof. Charles Livermore has been a librarian for over 30 years,
having been employed as a public librarian for the first 15 years
of his career before joining the faculty of St. John’s
University. He received his undergraduate degree from the
College of Wooster in Ohio, and holds a master’s degree in library
science from Columbia University and an M.B.A. from Rutger’s
University.
As a part of the Systems and eServices Department on the
Queens Campus, Prof. Livermore offers a variety of services to the
University community. He frequently serves at the Reference
Desk, providing research assistance to library patrons, and offers
library instruction classes for many of the departments of the
University. He also presents faculty development workshops,
particularly on the advantages of using HTML for the creation and
maintenance of faculty web pages as well as offering follow-up
assistance for the development of these pages on a one-on-one
basis.
Prof. Livermore is also one of the primary providers of the
Libraries' Ask Us!
service. Ask Us! is the Libraries' email reference
service available to students and faculty 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. There are no limitations on the questions that can be asked
and responses are generally provided within 3 hours (questions
submitted before midnight usually receive a response the same day);
however, depending upon the complexity of the question, in-person
interviews are sometimes recommended.
One of Prof. Livermore’s goals is to increase awareness of the
Libraries' subscription databases among the faculty members at the
University and to offer instruction on how the databases can be
used to enhance their research. Many databases offer Alert
Services which can notify professors of new articles in their areas
of concentration as they become available. Faculty can work
with librarians to create the best possible search on a topic and
then have that search run in the database automatically; links to
the newly found articles can then be sent to the user’s
email. Prof. Livermore feels that this current awareness tool
would be of great assistance to faculty in their research and is
actively publicizing it.
Prof. Livermore is also responsible for several websites, both
University-sponsered and personal. The Discover New York website,
availble from the Libraries' homepage, links to a range of
websites devoted to New York City from ethnic communities and
borough activities to educational and entertainment events.
This website was designed to support the DNY curriculum and Prof.
Livermore invites the input of faculty and students for
enhancements and improvements. His own site, http://charleslivermore.com,
was designed based upon frequently asked questions that he receives
at the Reference Desk.
Of particular interest to Prof. Livermore are the ways
librarians and students interact in this electronic age.
Recently he presented an information session on how the cell phone,
which he sees as an entertainment, educational, information and
communication mega-device, is being used by the student population,
and how the University Libraries can integrate the technology into
the services they provide. Further information on this
workshop can be found at http://charleslivermore.com/metro/metro.html
Prof. Livermore’s extracurricular activities include serving as
the president of the British North
America Philatelic Society (BNAPS), an international
organization devoted to the collector and researcher of the stamps,
postal markings and postal history of Canada, the pre-Confederation
colonies and Newfoundland. He is also the indexer for the
organization’s publication BNATopics, the
organization’s journal which is available online free of charge.
The print index was published in 1997 and will be available shortly
in electronic format.