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July 8, 2002
CONTACT: Linda McCandless, llm3@cornell.edu, 315-787-2417
By John Zakour
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Marty Schlabach
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GENEVA, NY: Cornell University librarian Martin Lee Schlabach has received the 2002 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Librarianship. Schlabach was recognized for his skills as a master reference librarian, outstanding service to the life sciences and library communities at Cornell for the past 15 years, and his strong leadership of the Frank A. Lee Library at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, in Geneva, NY, and the Comstock Entomology Library in Ithaca, NY.
"Marty is a manager with outstanding people skills who pays attention to details. He is a team player who works with others in the Cornell Library System for the betterment of the Geneva Library and the entire system," said Station director James E. Hunter. "He is committed to providing excellent service using the best technologies available."
Similar sentiments are expressed by others in the Cornell community. Donald Rutz, chair of the entomology department in Ithaca, quipped, "If John Henry and Anna Botsford Comstock had the opportunity to select the librarian to manage and care for their world class library, I am absolutely certain that Marty Schlabach would be their unanimous choice!"
Schlabach approaches his responsibilities with an eye toward the future. "The nature of collections of information is changing," he said. "Increasingly, collections are in electronic format and shared with the whole Cornell community. But, paper materials are not going away. It is the librarian's challenge to find the appropriate balance and to remember the underlying goal, which is to meet the information needs for research, outreach and education activities. The relevant services include user assistance, training and an array of special services that make it easier to access, use and manage the abundance of information."
Schlabach enjoys regular contact with the consumers of information and services. "I became a librarian to help people connect with the information they need, whether the information is found in print, online or another person," he said.
Schlabach has an illustrious history as a Cornell librarian. One colleague called him the "grandfather of the Cornell Gateway," because Schlabach was project coordinator for the original effort that made BIOSIS available over the campus network and developed a 'gateway' to provide easy access to it and other databases.
The Mann Library Gateway was telnet-based and released in 1991, long before the Web. It migrated to the Web in 1995 and eventually became the basis for the campus-wide Gateway at Cornell, which is now used to access thousands of electronic information resources. "The widespread use of the gateway on campus is probably one of the most satisfying accomplishments during my tenure at Cornell," said Schlabach. "Since the gateway has already seen a number of generations of changes, I should probably more appropriately be considered the great-grandfather!"
Schlabach is director of the Frank A. Lee Library in Geneva and the Comstock Entomology Library in Ithaca.
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