Calvin News

A pair of Calvin College library employees are among 55 individuals (mostly librarians) honored in the March 15 issue of Library Journal as "Movers & Shakers," people who are changing their environments to serve users dynamically and to empower them to help themselves.
Calvin's Greg Sennema (left) and Jed Koops (right) were deemed by Library Journal to fit the bill. In fact the publication calls them "an unbeatable combination."
Characteristically both Sennema and Koops are humbled by the award. 
Says Sennema: "It is an honor to be recognized, especially considering the relatively small size of Calvin compared to some of the other honorees. Hopefully this recognition will assure Calvin's students, faculty, and staff that the staff at the Hekman Library are committed to offering the best research resources possible using cutting edge web-based technology. It also reminds us that we need to continue developing web-based technologies in order to offer straightforward access to high-cost and high-quality scholarly information in order to compete with the perceived advantages of advertisement-supported web search tools like Google."
Koops adds: "It was an incredible surprise and honor to receive this award. It's been a lot of fun to work with Greg and I've learned a ton of things in the process. We owe a big thanks to Diane Vanderpol for putting together the nomination proposal, which obviously was well written since it got us in!"
Library Journal profiled Koops and Sennema in the March 15 issue, calling Sennema "a big-picture guy, with an insatiable imagination." And Koops is the master programmer, turning Sennema's ideas into reality.
One of Sennema's first assignments at Calvin was to redesign the library's web site, a task that first brought the Sennema/Koops partnership into being. Sennema, says Library Journal, realized that maintaining thousands of linked resources from static web pages could be never-ending. So Koops developed a web-based content-management system known as Hobbes which allows easy management of the Hekman Library web page content, while also providing quick access to such things as archives, subscription database content and more.
Koops, whose title is library systems programmer, graduated from Calvin in 1999 with a bachelor's in music theory and composition. He currently is working on a master's in composition at Michigan State University. Sennema's title is digital resources and reference/instruction librarian. He earned a master's in information studies from the University of Toronto in 1996 and his first job was as a librarian for the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Library Journal is the oldest independent national library publication. Founded in 1876, the same year as Calvin, the magazine is read by over 100,000 library directors, administrators, and others in public, academic, and special libraries. It is published 20 times annually. The annual Movers & Shakers supplement is also sent to members of Congress.
The 2002, 2003 and 2004 Movers & Shakers will be honored at a luncheon during the American Library Association conference in Orlando in June.