Appreciation: ISAW thanks Dawn Gross for seven years of service to the ISAW Library

In the beginning, there was the Dawn. Dawn Gross, ISAW's longest-serving staff member, will be leaving ISAW this week to become the Cataloging and Metadata Librarian at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Dawn was ISAW's first full-time staff member and quickly rose to become the Assistant Head Librarian of the ISAW Library. In her capacity as Assistant Head, Dawn not only oversaw the Herculean cataloging effort which characterized the first phase of the Library's existence (as of June 30, 2014, ISAW's seventh academic year, the Library boasted 36,296 items, representing 26,427 titles), but also helped design, implement, and manage its increasingly complex operations, public services, and digital projects, such as the Ancient World Digital Library, which will be launching this winter.

In Dawn ISAW was fortunate to have found not only a highly competent and dedicated cataloger and project manager, but also a librarian deeply immersed in, and professionally committed to, the fast-evolving landscape of library metadata. Truly, it was this side of Dawn's impressive skill set that has helped to make the ISAW Library a positively 21st-century institution supporting the study of the ancient world. In her new role at UMass, Dawn will be in her professional element, and the ISAW Library looks forward to continuing our collaboration with her on some of our current digital projects, much as we do on the Ancient World Online (AWOL) with Chuck Jones, the former Head Librarian, now the Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at Penn State (for more on this project, see ISAW Papers 7.6).

In the end, however, it was not only the work that drew our beloved Dawn away from ISAW and New York. A Massachusetts native, Dawn felt the pull of her native New England. She is thrilled that she will no longer have to hide her metadata or Red Sox lights under a Yankee librarian bushel (of course, the shame of a 71-91 record might keep her Red Sox light under that bushel until sometime in 2015).

Congratulations, Dawn, and best wishes on your all your future endeavors!