TUESDAY,OCT.23,2001
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 3A
Search for new dean of libraries down to three
By Eve Lamborn
Kansan staff writer
Three finalists for the dean of libraries position were decided last week by the library search committee.
The finalists are Charles W. Simpson, assistant director of libraries for systems and administration at the State University of New York, Stony Brook; Dana Rooks, dean of libraries at the University of Houston; and Stella Bentley, dean of libraries at Auburn University.
Bill Carswell, search committee chairman, said the search process had gone well so far.
"There was a good agreement on each of the candidates," he said. "They are all well-positioned and have good experience."
Carswell said the next step in the selection process would be for the finalists visit campus for interviews and presentations. Simpson visited campus last week, Rooks is on campus now, and Bentley will come to the University in November.
The finalists are meeting with library-related constituencies and University-wide constituences. Carswell said.
He said the search committee would get feedback from those groups after the visits. The committee will then draft a document for Provost David Shulenburger outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. The provost will make the final decision. Carswell said he hoped to see the position filled by the beginning of January.
the beginning of partnership.
The dean of libraries oversees all the libraries on the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. These libraries contain 3.3 million books and 27,000 periodical titles. The dean of libraries has a $14 million annual budget.
Keith Russell resigned the dean of libraries position in January for health-related reasons. Julia Rholes has served as interim dean since then.
Contact Lamborn at 864-4810
Critter control seeks humane treatment
By Maggie Koerth and Jessica Hood
Congratulations Koeon
Special to the Kansan
Snakes slide through ever-growing piles of leaves. The sounds of scampering feet and the chattering calls of raccoons, opossums and skunks fill the air.
This is no forest scene. It's a typical Lawrence backyard, garage, attic or basement.
Many homeowners see the animals as pests, but Marty Birrell, who runs the Lawrence Nature Center, said she did not see the animals as pests and said they should not be treated as such.
treated as such. "I have very little sympathy for people who move into a housing development in what used to be the forest and then want all the animals removed from their property," she said.
Casey McLenon, who works for Critter Control Services, 4825 Cody St. in shawnee, Kan., said that his company usually caught animals in live traps. He said Critter Control employees released the creatures outside of town, usually in a field or a
wooded area. He said his methods were humane because they didn't harm the animals.
But Birrell said just dropping an animal off was not the best course of action. She said raccoons and opossums often find themselves back in the city.
"They are taught to eat from the garbage and to sleep in attics or garages," Birrell said. "That's how they know to live."
they show to live. Dropring off an urban animal outside the city would put the animal at risk of being attacked by wild animals, Birrell said. The animal could also die of starvation because it may not know how to provide for itself in a rural environment.
Birrell said an opossum left on its own in bad weather, especially during the winter months, may not know where to find shelter and may die of exposure.
exposure
Andrew Frye. Overland Park senior, had squirrels in his attic this fall. His roommate eventually called the house's landlord who patched the holes and removed the squirrels. Frye
said that he preferred that the animals be left alone but that his reaction would differ depending on the species of animal.
species of animals
"If a opossum were in my house,
I'd definitely call pest control and
have it removed." Frye said. "Opossums are freaky, It all comes down to personality. Squirrels have it, opossums don't."
Birrell said she realized most people don't care about what happened to animals they found in their homes, but education can change that. She said Nature Center employees tried to make homeowners care about animals.
Birrell said her staff counsels people on how to remove the animals, but usually their recommendation is to leave the animal alone
If the weather is bad, the center explains how to set up shelters under old logs or piles of leaves so the released animals will stand a better chance of surviving. The Nature Center sometimes removed animals that were dangerous.
Nature Center employees also
advise homeowners on ways that they can prevent animals from getting into their homes, Birrell said. For example, putting caps on the chimney or patching a hole are easy solutions to keeping squirrels out of the attic.
McLenon said in some instances animals needed to be removed, particularly if the animal is causing damage to the home.
"When it is freezing, the animals aren't as active, so no one calls to have them removed," McLenon said.
He said he didn't worry about animals surviving during cold weather.
Birrell said sharing a house with animals could be trying for some homeowners, but she hoped people would change their attitudes and actions toward uninvited animals.
Contact Koerth or Hood at 864-4810
Halloween festival proceeds to aid student
By Jessica Tims Special to the Kansan
The nontraditional students organization, OAKS, is planning its first Halloween Festival, which will also serve as a fundraiser.
"The festival should be a lot of fun for students with children," said Joan Winston, OAKS president. "We are not making money for OAKS, we just wanted to do something fun for Halloween."
her with the kidney disease focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. The event is from 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday at Strong Farms, 1919 N. 1500 Road in Eudora. Doctors diagnosed the disease a year after Magaro, who is blind, and her Seeing Eye dog, Hamlet, were struck by a car on Jayhawk Boulevard.
Winston said all proceeds from the festival, would go to OAKS member Rachel Magario, Sao Paulo, Brazil, junior, who is awaiting a kidney transplant after doctors diagnosed
Richard Strong, owner of Strong Farms, said the festival would include his farm's attractions plus live music. It will also have a petting zoo, wagon rides for children and hay rack rides for children and adults. The corn maze will turn into a haunted house at night.
"We will have everything we
always have,and we are making room for some extra food vendors," Strong said.
Winston said the festival would also have a costume contest.
"I will say that the Lawrence merchants have been very good to us," she said.
The festivities are not only for people. Winston said. Pets are welcome on the farm.
"For people with four-legged children, doggies are welcome, but they must come leashed." Winston said. "We also encourage you to dress the dogs up. We will have a costume contest for them also."
Buses will be available at the Kansas Union and will leave for Strong Farms at 3:30 p.m. A return trip will be made halfway through the festival and afterward at 9 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased through Thursday at the SUA office in the Kansas Union and at the Emily Taylor Woman's Resource Center in Strong Hall. Prices for students are $5 in advance and $7 at the gate. Regular admission is $7. and admission for children ages 7 to 12 is $4. Children under the age of 6 get in free.
Contact Tims at 864-4R10
Kansans may dig at dinosaur site
Colorado fossil find gives amateurs chance to learn The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Fort Hays State University is asking Kansas residents, and especially teachers, to help dig up a dinosaur skeleton recently discovered in southeast Colorado
The Forest Service has awarded a $27,490 grant to Fort Hays State to cover the cost of digging out the fossil, sealing it in plaster and moving it to the university's Sternberg Museum of Natural History.
The museum is setting up a program that will let to 10 to 15 teachers take part in the fossil dig in the Comanche National Grassland in May. Five to 10 slots will be available to Kansas residents who are not teachers through a Forest Service volunteer program known as "Passport In Time," said Forest Service paleontologist Bruce Schumacher.
macher.
"We suspect there will be a lot more interest than we will be able to accommodate." Sternberg
assistant director Greg Liggett told The Wichita Eagle. "It will be a great experience if people are interested in digging dinosaurs, and a lot of people are."
Schumacher said the fossil find was important because it showed that 150 million years ago, sauropods, the huge, long-necked dinosaurs that included brontosaurus and diplodocus, ranged farther east than scientists once thought, within 100 miles of the Kansas-Colorado border. The dinosaur may have been 80 feet long and weighed as much as 50 tons.
Liggett said the university would provide $28,790 worth of hands-on services for the project, including cleaning, stabilizing and storing the fossil for study.
Teachers selected for the program will receive one to three hours of graduate credit for their experience, Liggett said. The program will involve classroom lectures at the university followed by a working weeklong field trip to the site, and winding up with participants developing teaching materials to be used in their classrooms. Tuition has not been set.
The five to 10 Passport in Time volunteers will have to cover the cost of getting to the site and taking part in the project, Schumacher said. He has asked Liggett to screen candidates for those slots, too.
The Colorado dig site is near the Picketwire Canyonlands Dinosaur Tracks, where more than 1,300 dinosaur footprints are preserved in fossilized rock. Schumacher said it was unlikely this dinosaur left any of those footprints, but its descendants might have.
The project is likely to take several years to complete, giving others who are interested a chance to take part in it, said Schumacher.
Even if most of the skeleton can be located and recovered, Liggett said, it is unlikely it will be assembled as a mounted display. Instead, it will be stored in the museum's extensive fossil collection, to be used for research and for teaching future generations of Kansas students about the long-extinct creatures, he said.
Long-time Topeka mortician astounded by depth of destruction in New York
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Bob Hoover isn't easily shocked. As a combat veteran of Vietnam and a mortician for 32 years, he's no stranger to the gruesome aspects of life and death.
But nothing, the Topeka resident said, prepared him for what he saw when he was summoned to New York City last month.
He spent two weeks working for the federal government's Disaster Mortuary Operations Response Team, recovering bodies and helping identify victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He'll return to the site next month.
"I am a Christian person, and if there is such thing as a hell, a lot of these people went through hell," said Hoover, who manages Crable Funeral Home in Osage City, about 25 miles south of Topeka.
I would say that the destruction spreads for eight square blocks, and then the dust and chaos it caused probably spreads 30 blocks every way. There's been more fragmentation (of
body parts) than you could realize," he said.
Although the process of identifying the victims has been achingly slow, Hoover thinks technology will allow all of those killed to be identified — some day.
"I would say that with DNA evidence, over the long haul, they will all be identified, but it will take years," he said. He spent part of his rotation in New York in the medical examiner's office taking DNA samples from remains.
Hoover has been a member of the Disaster Mortuary Operations Response Team since 1991. His assignments have included the recovery of bodies that were washed out of the cemetery in Hardin, Mo., when the Missouri River flooded in 1993, and the 1997 crash of a Korean Air jumbo jet on the island of Guam that killed 228 people.
He had never visited New York before last month and was surprised by the general attitude he encountered.
"I was thinking New York
"I am a Christian person, and if there is such thing as a hell, a lot of these people went through hell." Bob Hoover Topeka mortician
City is a place that says, 'Get out of my face,' but these people were so happy to see us there so we could do our job," he said.
Nearly two weeks after returning to Topeka, Hoover still doesn't feel normal, but he is ready to continue his life's work.
"I'll go back in 30 days," he said. "I'm proud to serve my country."
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