Rosalind Cuneo joined the UW Sea Grant Institute as a graduate assistant in September, and is working with Anne Moser and Kathy Kline on several Water Library and education projects. Rosalind is a master’s student in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and her interdisciplinary research focuses on climate change communication. Rosalind recently returned from Alaska, where she was studying perceptions and effects of climate change on the Kenai Peninsula, and is eager to turn her attention to water resources in the Great Lakes.
Rosalind’s projects include an exciting opportunity to bring a Lake Sturgeon-centered art exhibit to multiple venues in Wisconsin. The exhibit, called “Black Gold” features art from a variety of artists. Rosalind and Anne are organizing gallery spaces, as well as educational satellite events for kids and adults, to bring attention to the Lake Sturgeon’s conservation story. Additionally, Rosalind is collecting and organizing materials for curriculum packs such as the aquatic invasive species-focused “Attack Pack” to be sent out across the Great Lakes region.
A unique group of librarians is holding its first conference in the Great Lakes region next week. They are librarians who specialize in marine and freshwater science topics and who belong to a regional branch of the International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers. Their conference, “Great Lakes, Great Libraries,” is being held in Madison, May 16-19.
For National Poetry Month (April), serendipity introduced the Wisconsin Water Librarians to a new friend in the late Fort Atkinson poet, Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970). And speaking of friends, serendipity had a helping hand from the dedication of the 
For many, the time just before and right after the New Year brings an imposed calm, or at least a welcome slowing-down, with fewer hurried work emails from fewer folks in the office. And of course, there is vacation. So, what better time to indulge in one of 2016’s best long reads about water. A “long read,” sometimes seen in compound form as “longread,” is just a newfangled term for oldfangled in-depth narrative journalism. Often literary in style, a long read invites us to bypass the brevity of tweets, status updates, and click-bait headlines for a close and considered examination of something that compels us. As water librarians, compelled by water in all its manifestations and tangential relations, we curated a list of some of our favorite pieces of the past year (ok, that’s only partly true, but who can resist Joan Didion’s gorgeous 1979 meditation on California’s vast water engineering infrastructure, or Bryan Curtis’s wonderful reporting (2014) in the regrettably defunct Grantland on the history of the American water park).