SLA- NY Annual Meeting
Jack Styczynski

Professional Development – The Garden of Knowledge
Eileen Elizabeth Rourke |Professional Development Chair, 2013-14

Submitted by: Carol L. Ginsburg

“Thomas J. Baskind passed away peacefully on July 4, 2012 following a courageous battle against cancer. Tom was born on February 21, 1947 in Astoria, Queens. He graduated from St. Francis Preparatory School in 1964 and Fordham University in 1968. He earned a Masters Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill school of Journalism.

Tom had a successful and varied career including positions at Field & Stream Magazine, as a Vice President of CBS Sports, Manager at LexisNexis, a Director at Deutsche Bank. He enjoyed golf, fishing, boating and vacationing at Lake George, Cape Cod and Bermuda. Tom is survived by Ann, his beloved wife of 44 years, his son Tom and daughter in-law Sara, and his daughter Janine,  her husband Paul, and his most cherished granddaughters,  Noelle and Paige. Contributions in his memory can be made to the American Cancer Society.”

Jack Styczynski

The highlight of the SLA New York Chapter’s annual meeting on October 4th was the presentation of the Inaugural Dana Gordon Innovation Award to Pam Rollo, past president of both SLA and SLA NY.

Gordon was the long-time chapter member who passed away earlier this year.  At the meeting, she was remembered in speeches by friends and colleagues Seth Bookey and Judy Ganeles, as well as in a written tribute by Susan Szeliga, which was read aloud by Ganeles.

Upon receiving the award, Rollo’s first words were “this feels fraudulent,” although she immediately made clear that was meant as a compliment to Gordon, calling it a “tremendous honor” and returning the $250 that came with it back to the chapter for professional development use, believing that’s what Gordon would have wanted.

After the meeting, Rollo shared further thoughts.

“Dana was such a tremendous, tremendous person because she was this wonderful bridge between what we have historically been and what we are now,” Rollo said.  “Dana was really a scholar.  She read incredibly; she really did serious research.  She was a great news librarian and I think the thing we admire her for is that she always accepted the waves.  She was like a surfer.  Whatever technology came along, whatever new management capability came along, she not only engaged into that personally, she insured that her team had appropriate skills, had appropriate capabilities.  And then through the financial crisis of 2008, she really was very inspirational.  She’s such a can-do girl.  She embodies so many wonderful values that we admire professionally and that we admire personally.  We’re alike in many ways, but we’re different in many ways, and so I think it’s important for me to acknowledge the uniqueness that Dana brought to her career and that Dana brought to the chapter.”

Rollo’s latest project with the chapter is the new Leadership Speaker Series, which she told members should inspire them to be more “selfish,” meaning not so reliant on employers to manage their careers.

“What we’re suggesting is that it’s perfectly acceptable and more importantly it’s proper that people have to go ahead and take care of their own career,” she said.  “We want our members to be selfish.  We want our members to have aspirations.  We’d like our members to become hiring managers, senior executives, because the people who really understand what we do best are people who do it.”

The speaker series is designed to accomplish that, Rollo added.  “I hope it’s going to provide some inspiration.  I hope that it’s really going to broaden their horizon, make them think bigger.”

The new program is actually part of a larger membership campaign that SLA NY President Donna Severino addressed at the meeting.  It includes a variety of events, promotions and other endeavors, and as of October had helped increase chapter membership from 751 to 777 in the calendar year.

“If this was 15 years ago, I would say, not so good, but in this economy and the way the profession has changed, I’m jumping for joy,” Severino said.  “So if I can increase 50 to 75 new members by the end of the year, that would make me happy.”

A restructuring of communications was also discussed at the meeting.  Severino said the chapter has always had a communications program, but it was very small, being run by one or two people.  After a committee was formed, there’s now a division of labor with different members handling social media, listservs and the website—with everyone backed up in case they’re sick or otherwise unavailable.  “We’ve also scheduled communications so we’re not bombarding people,” she added.  “We thought about the saturation level.”

Related to communications is SLA NY’s current effort to transform ChapterNews into an e-publication.  “It went from a print publication to a blog, and what we want to do is bring it into the 21st century and make it an online publication, an e-publication,” said Severino.  A subcommittee has been crafting an editorial policy, with the aim of turning it over to the full publications committee for design and construction.

*   *   *   *   *

In other chapter business:

• Also honored at the meeting were Vida Cohen, who received the Mergent Distinguished Service Award, Nick Collison, Amy Sarola and Matthew Brown, who each received President’s Awards, and the chapter’s Communications Committee, which earned the Mergent Outstanding Achievement Award.  The committee includes Sarola (Director of Communications and SLA NY listserv), Nicole Dupras (Secretary and LinkedIn/Twitter), Katie Hut (Facebook), Davis Erin Anderson (student listservs), Rebecca Chadwick (student listservs), Stan Friedman (Webmaster), Hannah Behrens (non-announcement social media postings), Jackie Rider (website), Jodi Nelson (website), John Tomlinson (website) and Johanna Goldberg (website).
• The Ellis Mount Scholarships were presented to Gretchen Nadasky and Eimmy Solis.  These scholarships for local library school students were created this year in Mount’s memory, after the passing of the long-time Columbia professor and SLA NY member.
• The 2013 Executive Board candidates for open positions were all approved by unanimous consent.  They are Nick Collison for President Elect, Krissa Corbett-Cavouras for Secretary, Happy Blitt for Finance and Fundraising Chair and Eileen Rourke for Professional Development Chair.
• SLA NY finances were announced, which includes approximately $131,000 in various accounts.  “For a not-for-profit chapter, that’s very good,” Severino said.

Jack Styczynski

“I’m not Garrison Keillor’s researcher.”

That was how National Public Radio reference librarian Kee Malesky humorously introduced herself at a book talk on October 15th, co-sponsored by the Metropolitan New York Library Council and SLA NY.

Malesky’s second book of facts, “Learn Something New Every Day,” is just out, and includes 366 days’ worth of entries for a leap year, many derived from research requests she’s worked on during her career at NPR.

The Brooklyn native told the audience she hadn’t anticipated such a professional path, but after her husband was hired as a producer at NPR in the 1970s, the couple never followed through on plans to move back to the New York area, so she too got a job at the Washington, D.C. based network, initially as an “administrative drudge.”  Eventually, after leaving to attend library school at Catholic University, she returned to NPR as a librarian in 1984.

The succeeding 28 years have been filled with fact checking, background research and finding experts, as she described it.  During that time, her department’s role expanded to also include pronunciations, which she called “the biggest headache,” trying to balance native pronunciations with what the American ear is used to hearing.

Her all-time favorite research request?  Verifying that all of New England could fit inside South Dakota, with approximately Delaware to spare.

At the talk, Malesky read several entries from her new book aloud, and then took questions.  Among the topics discussed was the continual slashing of news library jobs, as she particularly lamented the fact that the Wall Street Journal no longer has a library, providing a recent example where that came back to bite the paper.

In an exclusive interview afterward, she shared more of her thoughts on the state of the industry.  An abridged version follows.

Q. What’s the future for news libraries?

Kee Malesky: I have to admit, being at the end of my career and I hope close to retiring, I’m not personally invested in that, but I want to be optimistic.  I just can’t believe the world isn’t going to recognize that some mistakes have been made.  In an economic crisis, I understand if a news organization is cutting editors and reporters, and cutting beats, and not covering foreign events anymore and running wire copy instead, of course they had to cut the librarians too, but I want it all to come back.  New formats—I don’t care web or paper—there still has to be good journalism, and I don’t believe there can be good journalism without essential library research behind it.

Q. What do you tell young people who want to get into the business?

KM: I tell them that it’s going to be all about flexibility.  You need to see the need for your skills, and go and pitch yourself.  You’re certainly not waiting for somebody to come and offer you a job.  The example of the Wall Street Journal, after they closed their library, what happened was another news librarian I know went to the Wall Street Journal and said, “Don’t your editors need guides to research and some help in how to find things?”  Things that we would call “pathfinders” in library school.  And they gave him a job… So that’s what I tell people in library school now.  I’m very pleased to see that you’re optimistic enough to go and get the degree, and when you come out, unless the world is a new magical place and these problems have gone away, that’s what I think you’re going to have to do.  You’re just going to have to be more creative, adaptable, flexible.  See the need and go and pitch what you can do for them.  Don’t worry about being called a librarian or working in a library. It’s about the skills you have.

Q. What do you think has changed the most in the years that you’ve had your job and what do you miss the most?

KM: I like books.  I like the way books smell.  I used to like walking into that New York Times collection upstairs and smelling old paper.  I just miss books because that’s how I started out, but I also realize that I sometimes get a question and I stop and think, how would I have done this in print?  I don’t know anymore.  Certainly not, how could I answer this in 10 minutes or one hour?  You used to write to the GPO to get a document or an agency report and wait six weeks.  And now two seconds after it’s released or the day before it’s released, it’s on the agency’s website and we’ve got it and we can get it out to anybody who needs it.  So there’s no impact on librarianship greater than the Internet, but it’s not entirely positive.  There are many bad things about the Internet.  There’s a huge amount of garbage out there that certainly wastes our time trying to plow through it.

Kee Malesky’s books, “All Facts Considered” and “Learn Something New Every Day” are available in print, aromatically impeccable, from entirely positive Internet entities such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

View of Lake Michigan from conference venue, McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center

Leigh Hallingby

The SLA annual conference, held at McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center, got off to a terrific start for me with the first session that I attended on Sunday afternoon, July 15^th.  The Baseball Caucus hosted a compelling talk by Jonathan Eig, Chicago resident and author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (Simon & Schuster, 2006).  The highlight of Eig’s speech was his passionate retelling of his relentless search for the documents that he felt were essential for writing his book.  Specifically, Eig became aware of the existence of 200 letters that Gehrig wrote to his physician at the Mayo Clinic about his illness, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (now better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).  Eig knew only that the letters had been bought at auction and went on a tenacious and harrowing “journey” to find out who the owner is and to contact him.  The happy ending is that the buyer was willing not only to let Eig read the letters (and thus complete his book), but also to allow copies of them to be added to the collection of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY.

The Chicago Conference officially began on Sunday evening with awards and the keynote speech.  SLA-NY’s own Davis Erin Anderson was recognized as a Rising Star for, among other accomplishments, her many active roles in both SLA-NY and SLA@Pratt.  The keynoter was Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist with Apple and now author, speaker and entrepreneur.  His subject was “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts Minds and Actions.”  The three pillars of enchantment (ie, success of your product) are: Likability; Trustworthiness; Quality. Some advice from Kawasaki: launch your product with a great story; deliver bad news (if it happens) early; and use a dataset to change a mindset.  This was a slick, polished motivational speech which I personally did not care for.  I think it is a mistake for SLA to have chosen a motivational speaker as the keynoter and hope they will return in the future to speakers such as Madeleine Albright and Tom Friedman who offer substantive observations about our rapidly-changing world.  Fortunately I was able to assuage my disappointment at a wonderful “Expatriate New Yorker Happy Hour” at Cantina Laredo, with both drinks and food provided once again by SLA-NY’s generous vendor partner Leadership Directories .

Some of the other sessions I attended over the next couple of days were:

• “The New Knowledge Services – Next Steps for Career Professionals.” The presenter was SLA-NY’s own long-time star Guy St. Clair. I found his theme to be quite bold: that information professionals’ knowledge development and knowledge (KD/KS) sharing expertise make us the natural strategists in our workplaces to support an enterprise-wide and unified approach to KD/KS. So, even if we do not perceive ourselves as holding high positions in our organizations, Guy encourages us to become leaders in the knowledge arena at our places of employment.
• “Use of Social Media by Non-Profits.”  Some of the suggestions were: Time postings for audience use patterns (Facebook, for instance, now allows postings to be scheduled.).  Ask questions that provoke interaction with the audience such as: What would you do re X problem? Use photos which match your mission to generate more interactions. Post 1-2 minute videos. Use fill-in-the-blanks. Give shout outs to other organizations.  Remember that the quality of posts is more important than the quantity.
• “Enterprise Search”. The standout speaker was Peter Morville, whose company is Semantic Studios.  I have since learned that he is a highly respected information architecture and user experience consultant.  This is not surprising, as, after hearing Morville speak, I understood the terms “information architecture” and “user experience” in ways that I never have before.  I also learned a new word to describe how connected everyone and everything is today: Intertwingularity! And Morville observed that the line from product to service being blurred.  For instance, a medicine bottle may soon make phone call to remind you to take the pill.  In fact, he was so interesting that I wished Morville had been the keynoter on Sunday evening.
• “Global Economic Outlook.” Robin Bew, Chief Economist of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)  predicted that: There is 60-70% chance that the Eurozone will remain intact, though it is not likely to experience a recovery any time soon even comparable to the unsatisfactory one that U.S. has experienced. By 2025 China will have 25 cities with 25 million or more people, thereby creating tremendous business opportunities to build public transit, housing, etc., there.  The emerging world will outstrip the currently rich world in growth over next couple of decades. By 2020 they will be as big as the G7, and by 2030, they will be significantly larger. So the center of economic gravity is shifting dramatically.

The Info-Expo (ie, exhibits hall) was, as always, a great place to catch up on the latest products for info pros to invest in.  Kudos go to Chemical Abstracts Society (CAS) which made a contribution to the Lubuto Library Project, also supported by SLA-NY, every time a conference attendee spent the short time required to complete an interesting and enjoyable exercise on an erasable board about the services of her/his library or information center.

Fortunately I programmed into my trip a day to enjoy Chicago, which was looking terrific in mid-summer in the downtown area, partly due to huge planters along Michigan Avenue.  I was able to get to both the attractive Harold Washington Library (opened 1991) and the exquisite former Chicago Central Library, now known as the Chicago Cultural Center (opened 1897).  A tour of latter included its two gorgeous glass domes, as well as beautiful mosaic tile decorations around all the doors, windows, and staircases.  Chicago is famous for beautiful architecture, and this building is definitely one of the reasons for that.

On Thursday, July 19^th, the day after the conference officially ended there were tours offered, and I signed up for one to the University of Chicago libraries.  The piece de resistance was to be a demonstration of the Dematic Automated Library System that allows any item stored within a vault on the campus to be retrieved robotically within five minutes! This system also allows for much greater storage capacity – higher than 50% more – which allows many more books to remain highly accessible on campus.  As fate would have it, this demo was in the later part of the day when I needed to be at the airport, and as fate would further intervene, my plane departed three hours late, and I could have seen this new technological magic after all.  But this was a small glitch in an otherwise rewarding trip to the SLA Annual Conference. Many thanks to all the vendors whose support is crucial in making the conference possible and successful year after year!

Leigh Hallingby

Four thousand information professionals from all over the world gathered in the capital city of Finland for the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), from August 11-17, 2012.  I was fortunate to be among them in this lovely, old world European city, which is also a summer paradise, with comfortable temperatures and humidity, plus long light. Of course, tourists don’t have to pay the price later on of suffering through the oft referred to harsh winter days with as few as four hours of light. The conference theme was “Libraries Now! Inspiring. Surprising. Empowering. “

I focused frequently in my choice of sessions to attend on the delivery of traditional and non-traditional library services to a variety of needy populations.  The groups served, I realized, fell into three categories.

1. People belonging to the long time majority population in their locales.

• Farmers in the Republic of Serbia
  Most farmers were excluded from modern flow of information, partly because the libraries had been neglected for more than 20 years due to war and other factors and partly because of lack of computer sophistication. Four libraries in Jagodina province were revitalized (with funding in part from my employer, the Open Society Foundations). The libraries offered trained to the farmers in computer usage.  They then went further beyond their traditional role by sponsoring lectures on agriculture, which were attended by over 1,200 farmers!  As a result the farmers had access to important information about the best crops to grow in their fields and orchards and were able to be more economically successful.

• Teens in Washington, DC.
  Closer to home, another example of innovative services to the mainstream population in an area is Youth202 in Washington, DC (202 is the area code for Washington, DC). It is the first centralized, teen-driven digital “space” for information and resources for DC teens. Local youth, mostly economically disadvantaged, learn radio production, web writing, and research skills at the DC Public Library, to create and maintain a website (youth202.org), a Twitter feed (@Youth202), and a radio program. Youth202 fills a huge, teen-identified information gap, fully exploiting the power and potential of digital and social media as knowledge management tools. Interestingly, this program-oriented paper was part of a session on the “Potential of Knowledge Management in Public Libraries.”

2. People belonging to a long time minority population in their locales.

Delegates in front of the convention center on the outskirts of Helsink

• Aboriginal and First Nation students at the University of British Columbia.
  Two women from the Library of the University of British Columbia near Vancouver spoke about the Aboriginal Engagement Program, the goal of which is to increase the success of Aboriginal and First Nation students, who graduate at significantly lower rates than other students. Many need remedial assistance, and so the library staff provide special workshops, including sharing their own personal histories of similar struggles such as not having a traditional high school diploma. Special tours are offered to make the library less intimidating. Program staff make a point of engaging with these Aboriginal and First Nation students when they see them on campus. The library staff also provides both formal and informal information literacy for everyday life like how to use cell phone, obtain a driver’s license, and manage one’s online identity. The Library also holds an annual Aboriginal career fair.

• Maoris’ Roles in the National Library of New Zealand.
  National Librarian Bill Macnaught, spoke of his commitment to turn the National Library into a truly bicultural organization reflecting both the Maori and the European populations.   He made it clear that, because of long-term distrust between the two populations, this process is quite challenging, but that he is determined to succeed.  Seven priorities have been identified including adding more Maori material online and improving its findability, hiring more bilingual staff, and increasing the capability of all staff to assist patrons seeking information about the Maori.  Until now, Maori patrons have tended to be directed to Maori staff.  Macnaught hopes that eventually the National Library can be an advocate for more bilateral thinking across all government departments.

• Rural Women in Bangladesh
  The Women as Leaders of Cultural Change program in Bangladesh is working to establish Multipurpose Community Learning Centers (MCLC) in rural areas. The staff wants to increase women’s access to information, in part by sending out mobile libraries in which women are the members and readers. I was not prepared for the slide that followed of the mobile library on a cart which is pulled by a bicycle ridden by the librarian.  What a contrast it was to step outside the conference center a little while later and explore a wonderful Finnish mobile children’s library on a beautifully decorated 21^st century bus.

3. People belonging to new minority populations in their locales

• Very Multicultural Libraries in Switzerland.
  Switzerland, to my surprise, has 1.8 million immigrants in a population of only 8 million.  So, at about 20%, this represents one of highest immigrant populations in Europe. And this in a small country that already has four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romanche. Of course this list does not even include the now universal language of Europe, English. The mind boggles even without the presence of 200,000 immigrants cannot yet use one of national languages. Interbiblio, the Swiss association for books without borders, has helped to create 21 intercultural libraries. These have to include materials in the languages of the immigrant populations, both to strengthen cultural identity and to signal appreciation of other cultures.  One library has materials in over 200(!) languages. Some of these libraries offer language classes. Their websites are in multiple languages.

• Newly Multicultural Libraries in Finland
  Finland until the last 20 years was an overwhelmingly homogeneous society, but now this has changed. The Sello and Pasila (right across the street from the conference center) public libraries now offer “language cafes,” which give immigrants the opportunity to practice with native speakers who will be patient and will reply to them in Finnish, not English.  So these language cafes help immigrants to ease beyond their comfort zones of mainly communicating with people like themselves. They also help non-immigrant Finns, who may not be accustomed to multiculturalism, to ease out of the same comfort zone of mainly communicating with people like themselves.

Finnish mobile children’s library

There was much, much more at IFLA in Helsinki.  I actually spent the first whole day of the conference with the Rare Books and Manuscripts librarians, who held their meeting in the center of the city in the beautiful National Library of Finland.  And I spent the last morning, after the conference was officially over, going on an IFLA-sponsored tour of the brand new and gorgeous Helsinki University Library, which was not even open to students yet.  This is where the 21^st century library meets the kind of modern design, for which Finland is so famous.  The results are absolutely spectacular!  Not only is the architecture magnificent, but the library is filled with a wide variety of beautiful Finnish furniture, with many pieces in attractive colors.  It was made clear that the Finns feel that they need welcoming environments such as this to help to get them through their very challenging winters.  And we saw the latest greatest technology there for returning books.  Barcodes are out of the books, and RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) chips have taken their place.  RFID technology allows patrons to check books back in themselves and lay them on a conveyor belt which quickly vanishes from sight. But behind the scene each book drops from the belt into the correct bin for the area of the library in which it is shelved.  The bins can be disengaged from the conveyor belt and rolled like a super market cart to the right area for reshelving.  Pretty cool!

In 2013 IFLA will hold its next annual conference in Singapore from August 17-23.

Marion I. Lipshutz

Marion I. Lipshutz is a librarian, aspiring writer and non-profit professional. She earned her MSLIS with distinction from Pratt Institute and her MA in anthropology from the New School for Social Research.

I’m not sure exactly when I discovered this remarkable book, but I’m glad that I discovered it.  It has helped me to make a successful transition from work as a corporate law librarian to a new career in research, writing and development in the non-profit sector. It’s the type of unexpected career journey that many librarians have had to make and are making in these challenging times, and it’s reassuring to have had Mark Levy’s book for support along the way. This is the first book that I pick up when I’m feeling unsure about how to structure any new writing assignment, whether it’s a newsletter article, grant application, or blog entry.  It has become irreplaceable to me as a guide for both personal and professional writing.

Levy presents the “Six Secrets to Freewriting” in the first part of the book. They got me unstuck as I went through the process of revising my resume, planning my job search strategy, and writing a seemingly unending series of cover letters. “Powerful Refinements” and “Going Public,” the second and third parts of Accidental Genius, explain how to revise your work and how to shape a rough draft into a publishable piece. The book is user friendly, with important “Points to Remember” summarized and “Try This” suggestions at the end of each chapter.

Of the six basic free-writing secrets that Levy shares, the one that I find the most useful is the most basic one:  “Write fast and continuously.”  As Levy notes, if you set a timer for seven, ten or twenty minutes, and write in longhand fast and continuously, you will outsmart your inner critic or censor and come up with new ideas.  (Seven minutes is my personal favorite, because seven is one of my lucky numbers, but experiment to find the time limit that works best for you.)  If you get stuck, just follow one of Levy’s three tips: Keep rewriting the last word that you wrote, keep typing or writing the last letter, or write “meaningless stuff,” sentences that don’t make any sense.  Eventually, the ideas will start to flow again as long as you keep your pen moving or fingers typing on the computer keyboard. From there, you will have a rough draft full of new and uncensored ideas.  Use the techniques in the second and third parts of the book to create a finished product.  In sum, Levy applies the insight of another wise writing teacher, Barbara Fine Clouse, whose book, Working It out: a Troubleshooting Guide for Writers, he quotes from at the beginning of Accidental Genius:  “The act of writing stimulates thought, so when you cannot think of anything to write, start writing anyway.”

Finally, with two of Levy’s free e-books posted on the website for Levy’s marketing strategy firm, Levy Innovation, (www.levyinnovation.com) you can preview some of the techniques of Accidental Genius before you decide whether or not to buy the book.  They work well as standalone resources or as supplements to Accidental Genius.  They are:  The Fascination Factor and List-Making as a Tool of Thought Leadership.  Happy writing!

Accidental Genius:  Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content. By Mark Levy.Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2010.