CAMPUS NOTES

A six-month pilot project to test expansion of the Melvyl Catalog, the 10 UC campuses joint library catalog, will launch on April 28, according to Patrick Dawson, associate university librarian at UCSB. The test of the “Next-Generation Melvyl Pilot,” as it is called, aims to garner user feedback on the ambitious new design, which incorporates current Melvyl features, and to identify bugs in a system that can search libraries around the globe. Go to for a FAQ and introductory slide show.

Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology and director of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, has received a 2008 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. It honors psychologists who have made “distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research” in the field.

Julie Carlson, professor of English, explores family values and interactions among an influential clan of writers in “England’s First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and is the first to examine their writing collectively.

Cedric Robinson, professor of black studies and political science, analyzes theater and film depictions of racial behavior in the early 20th century in “Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before WW II” (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

Ron Cortez, a former senior deputy in the Santa Barbara County Executive Office, has been named associate vice chancellor, administrative services, with special responsibility for the division’s emergency and strategic planning and campus sustainability programs.

Deborah Karoff, a former director of Human Resources for the University Office of the Education Abroad Program, has been appointed the Academic Senate’s new executive director. She succeeds Claudia Chapman, who recently retired after more than three decades with UC.

Deirdre O’Shea, a former United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) editor and communications specialist for 15 years, has been selected as communications director for the College of Letters & Science.

Stephen Kriz’s last name was misspelled in the March 31 “Transitions” section.