Vol. 82, No. 121
Eugene, Oregon 97403
Monday, March 16,1981
Officials suspect arson
Morning fire rouses dorm
By BILL MANNY
Of the Emerald
Arson is suspected in a fire early Sa
turday morning in the Hamilton-Spiller
dormitory that sent 86 University men
scampering into the dark.
The Eugene Fire Department estimat
ed damage at $10,000 — $8,000 to the
23-year-old structure and $2,000 to con
tents. The fire started in a small janitor’s
closet — a storage room for vacuums,
brooms and mops — just off the first floor
main lobby.
Resident assistant Brent Dahl said he
awoke and smelled smoke soon after 3
a m. Saturday and was roused from bed
to the sound of students pounding on
doors.
Dahl called campus security at 3:11
a m., and students set off the first fire
alarm at 3:15.
“I called it in first, before pulling a fire
box," Dahl explained.
A reported fire gets a quicker response
than a “typical” weekend dormitory fire
alarm, he said.
"They would not jump on it as fast.”
There were no injuries. One student
leaped out a second-story window but
was unhurt.
“He just heard a lot of screaming and
yelling, and jumped," Dahl said.
Dahl, whose room is near the storage
room where the fire broke out, said the
adjacent dorm lobby was filled "with a
great deal of smoke.”
"The entire dorm was outside in five
minutes,” Dahl said. "Lots of people in
my upper floors thought it was a false
alarm.”
False alarms — at least in Hamilton —
haven’t been a problem this year. Dahl
said only one false alarm has been pulled
this year.
The dormitory, more than two decades
old, is not equipped with sprinklers.
Smoke detectors are located in the re
sidence areas, but there are none in the
lobby, lounge or lounge restroom.
Dahl said his room had heavy smoke
STAIRS
mm
IlSlflP
A fire that awoke Hamilton-Spiller dormitory residents
damaged the lobby area and sent University freshmen out into
i
Photo by Erich Boekelheide
the darkness early Saturday morning. Officials suspect arson
in the blaze that caused about $10,000 damage.
but was not damaged
The fire department arrived at 3:23
a m. and extinguished the fire in 30 min
utes.
In an effort to prevent more arson fires,
outside hall locks have been replaced
and new master keys issued. In addition,
the storage closet has been barricaded,
and fire watches have been established.
Paul Bransom, emergency commun
ications coordinator for the EFD, said 19
fire fighters responded to the alarm,
along with three engine corps, one truck
corps, a fire marshall and a battalion
chief.
Investigators should know more about
the possibility of arson Monday, Bran
som said.
“It’s under investigation,” he said.
The last campus fire occurred on April
5 last year in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon
fraternity. A University woman died in the
fire. According to EFD officials, the last
dormitory fire was approximately two
years ago when a plastic coffee maker
caught fire in a resident’s room.
On Sunday a campus security repre
sentative said false alarms are common
on campus, but there is no way to
eliminate the danger inherent when
students cry wolf.
“There are always going to be prank
sters," the representative said.
To stop the pranks, “I think you'd have
to re-educate our whole society.
“What can you do about freshmen?"
Library finally chooses cataloging system
By MARIAN GREEN
Ol the Emerald
If a newly chosen cataloging system lives up to
expectations, University librarians will be able to
catalog and find books for students faster and more
accurately.
After almost five months of evaluating cataloging
systems, the University Library Committee and library
staff have chosen the Ohio College Library Center,
says head librarian George Shipman.
When implemented — the tentative date is June 1
- the OCLC system will cost $20,000 for terminals and
other up-front costs. The system's expected yearly
cost is $96,000. About $90,000 of that will be covered
by funds used for the library's current system.
The library is negotiating with the University
Foundation for the approximately $20,000 in up-front
costs and for the additional $6,000 needed for yearly
costs, Shipman says.
Three cataloging utilities — OCLC, the Research
Libraries Group and the Washington Library Network
— were tested for their ability to serve the library’s
needs. To determine this, the library gave each system
100 uncommon book titles to run through their data
bases, Shipman explains.
OCLC came out the winner, he says.
"The richest data base by far was OCLC.”
OCLC’s "hit rate" for locating the books was in
the "mid-90s" while the other two utilities had rates of
less than 70, he says.
The OCLC system will enable the library to ca
talog books faster and more efficiently, Shipman says
And the system will help the library reduce its backlog
of uncataloged books and reclassify books cataloged
under outmoded classifications such as the Dewey
Decimal system.
Shipman says the library still can find a specific
book for a student, "but it’s the day-to-day cataloging
we’re behind in."
At present, the library has a cataloging backlog of
14,000 new book titles and a reclassification backlog
of 250,000 book titles, says Elaine Kemp, head of the
cataloging department.
Kemp estimates that even with OCLC it will take
"at least a year” to substantially reduce the new title
backlog and "three to five years" to completely
reclassify titles cataloged under outmoded systems.
Once that work is completed, “you ought to have
an expectation that all materials will be cataloged
consistently so you don’t have to wander through a
jumble of approaches," Shipman says.
Other benefits of computer cataloging are title
searching for acquisitions processes and faster
interlibrary loans, Shipman says.
Once in place, the OCLC system can be modified
or a new system can be added if the library's needs
change, Shipman says.
The library is the last of the national Association of
Research Libraries to join a cataloging utility, Ship
man says.
"We should’ve been affiliated years ago."