HIGHLIGHTS

     UCLA Professor of Musicology Susan McClary will visit campus Sept. 22-24 as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program. The University's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa has been selected to host McClary, who will meet with students and faculty, participate in classroom discussions, and offer a public lecture, "Intellectual Creativity in the Age of Computers." The lecture will be Wednesday evening, Sept. 22, at 8 p.m. at the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center. After the lecture there will be a reception in the Futterer Lounge.
   McClary received her Ph.D. from Harvard, and has taught at UCLA since 1994. She is a recipient of UCLA's Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award and a MacArthur fellowship. She is co-editor of the Music/Culture series, Wesleyan University Press, and is on the editorial board of the University of California Press. Among her books are Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and Sexuality; and Georges Bizet: Carmen. McClary is one of 13 scholars chosen to participate in Phi Beta Kappa's visiting scholar program this year.
   Established in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's oldest and most eminent academic honor society. The society's visiting scholar program offers select university chapters the opportunity to host distinguished scholars from across the country each year. UAlbany's Phi Beta Kappa chapter was established in 1974.
    For more information on the lecture, contact Mary Beth Winn at 442-4439. McClary's appearance is co-sponsored by the departments of Music, English, and Languages, Literatures and Cultures, as well as the University chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Volunteers Needed for Oct. 9 Race for Literacy
   Volunteers are needed to help with race registration and packet distribution at the 1999 Race for Literacy, which will be held on Saturday, Oct. 9.
   The race begins at Albany High School at 10 a.m. and ends on the Western Avenue side of the new Library. Volunteers are needed beginning at 6:30 a.m. on the UAlbany main campus until the race begins, at this major Times Union/UAlbany event. Each volunteer will receive a commemorative T-shirt. To volunteer, call Robert McFarland at 442-5400.
   This new 5k (3.1 mile) event includes an on-campus fall family festival from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Proceeds from the race will benefit area teachers and students through the Classroom Enrichment Program. 
Check-in will be at the Dutch Quad Parking lot on the main campus from 7 to 9 a.m. All runners will be bused to the start area at Albany High School.
   For a registration form, call Dennis Kennedy at 442-3752, or register online at www.timesunion.com/race by Oct. 1. Registration is $15 by Oct. 1, and $20 the day of the race. 

University Libraries Announce New Web-based On-line Catalog 
    The Libraries now offer a Web-based on-line catalog, ADVANCEWeb, in addition to the traditional text-based ADVANCE catalog. The new version of the catalog provides access to the collections of all three libraries with an added feature: it provides direct links to  resources mounted on the Web.
   “This means that if you find a catalog entry for a book, report, or government document that is available on the Web, you can access it with a click of the mouse,” said Trudi Jacobson, coordinator of User Education Programs. “These Web-based items are easily isolated - just select the Online database option from the initial screen of the catalog.”
   She said ADVANCEWeb allows easy printing, downloading, and e-mailing of records. Those who are looking for reserve materials, however, should continue to use the text-based ADVANCE catalog system. They can search for reserve materials by the course name or professor, options not currently available on ADVANCEWeb. For more information, look up the Libraries' Web page at: www.albany.edu/library/.

Sodexho Marriott Awarded Food Service Contract
   Sodexho Marriott Services has been retained to provide food service for the UAlbany campus. Under the one-year contract, which took effect July 1, the company will provide food service at five on-campus and three off-campus locations.

   With today's rapid advances in communications technologies, it's becoming much easier to share information, build knowledge, and develop relationships with groups of people who share common interests and goals. 
   The resulting “knowledge networks” have now become the subject of the largest research grant in the six-year history of the University at Albany's Center for Technology in Government.
   The $1 million award from the National Science Foundation will focus the center on knowledge networking in the public sector, taking into account the variety of relationships, policies, information, processes, and technology tools organizations use to achieve collective goals.
   “We're excited to embark on this investigation into the rapidly-expanding field of knowledge networks and especially pleased that NSF has recognized the importance of information sharing in the public sector,” center director Sharon S. Dawes said of the three-year study. “We're honored to have such a prestigious research organization recognize the value, quality, and impact of our work.”
   The center will study seven initiatives led by New York State and local agencies that depend on sharing knowledge and information across multiple organizations. The goals of these initiatives include the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of services to homeless people, the design of the state's central accounting system, and information needed to make sound investments in new technologies. The study will result in an enhanced conceptual model of knowledge network formation and operation in the public sector, as well as recommendations for practitioners about planning and implementing successful knowledge networks.
   The center has been dedicated throughout its brief history to improving the business of government through investigations into the policy, management, and technology issues faced by local, state, and federal public sector agencies. Its knowledge-networking project is one of just 31 investigations awarded a total of $50 million in grants by NSF through its Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) program. 
   The goal of KDI research is to: create networked systems that increase the availability of information, develop a better understanding of the nature of human and computer intelligence, design new ways of advancing knowledge through discovery, and provide a forum for multidisciplinary research about knowledge investments. 
   “The investigations conducted by the Center for Technology in Government are wonderful examples of the kind of work that is leading the University at Albany to the forefront of public research universities,” said University Vice President for Research Christopher F. D'Elia. “They demonstrate the vital link between scholarship and practice that is so crucial to our mission.”
   The Center for Technology in Government is an applied research center devoted to improving government and public services through policy, management, and technology innovation. The center works with government, corporate, and academic partners to pursue new ways of applying computing and communications technologies to the practical problems of information management and service delivery in the public sector.