Join DC/SLA for these Events in April

April's jam packed with social, networking, volunteer, and professional development events!

* Dine Around
Date:  April 1
Host:  Patrick Clapp
Restaurant:  Flying Fish
Restaurant Address:  815 King Street #A
Alexandria, VA
Restaurant telephone number:  (703) 600-3474
Restaurant website:  www.flyingfishdc.com
Closest Metro station:  King Street (Blue & Yellow Lines)
Arrival time:  7 PM
RSVP:  patrick.clapp@qiagen.com
Sponsored by the Solo Librarians Division of SLA.

* Building Sister Libraries
Date: April 2 10am-1pm
Location: Southeast Neighborhood Library, 403 7th St. SE, Washington, DC -near the Eastern Market station on the Orange Line.
DCLA, DC Public Library and the DC/SLA International Relations Committee welcomes registration for "Building Mindful Bridges for Kids and Armchair Travelers through Sister Libraries" on April 2, 2011, 10 am -1 pm. The workshop will cover the basics for setting up a Sister Library partnership with an overseas library. To register, please visit the DCLA website. Deadline for registration is March 31, 2011. For questions about the workshop agenda, please contact Barbara Conaty at bcon9876@aol.com or 703-863-2273.

* Dine Around
Date:  April 4
Host:  Sharon Lenius
Restaurant:  Joe Theismann's
Restaurant Address:  1800 Diagonal Road
Alexandria, VA
Restaurant telephone number:  (703) 739-0777
Restaurant website:  www.joetheismanns.com
Closest Metro station:  King Street (Blue & Yellow Lines)
Arrival time:  6 PM
RSVP:  leniussa@gmail.com

* Dine Around
Date:  April 5
Host:  Jessica Bland
Restaurant:  Faryab
Restaurant Address:  4917 Cordell Avenue
Bethesda, MD
Restaurant telephone number:  (301) 951-3484
Restaurant review:  www.washingtonian.com/restaurantreviews/2569.html
Closest Metro station:  Bethesda (Red Line)
Arrival time:  6:30 PM
RSVP:  msjbland@yahoo.com

* Treasures of the USGS Library
Date: April 6, 7-8pm
Location: USGS, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, VA
Join DC/SLA’s own Richard Huffine for a free lecture on the treasures of the USGS Library, held at the USGS facility in Reston, VA. Since its creation in 1882, the USGS Library has grown to become the world's largest library dedicated to earth and natural sciences, holding more than 1.5 million volumes and 800,000 maps. Richard Huffine, Director of the USGS Libraries Program, will highlight some of the rarest, most valuable, and significant materials held by the USGS. These include early maps of America, documents that establish the provenance of the Hope Diamond, and documentation of our exploration of the American West by Hayden, King, Powell and Wheeler. The Library’s initiative to digitize their collection for online access will make these cultural and historic records available worldwide to anyone at anytime.

* DC/SLA Board Meeting
Date: April 7, 6-8pm
Location: Dow Jones, 1025 Connecticut Ave, NW, 11th Floor, Suite 1100, Washington, D.C. 20036.

* Moving into Management and Team Leadership Roles Part 1-ClickU
Date: April 12, 1-2:30pm
Location: DowJones- 1025 Connecticut Ave, NW  11th Floor, Suite 1100 - Washington, D.C. 20036- (Metro: Farragut North or Farragut West; between L & K Street on Connecticut)
Guests must present a photo ID to the guard in the lobby.
In this session, participants will learn about making the move to a new position, including clarifying expectations and establishing early goals, even if your new boss doesn't think this is necessary. It's also important to understand yourself and the importance of knowing your tendencies to better understand those working with you. We'll also cover why politics and relationship building are critical, and how to approach these responsibilities with confidence and competence.
FREE for SLA members attending at the Onsite location (Dow Jones) sponsored by DC-SLA Chapter.
$25 FEE  for NON-SLA members attending at Onsite location (Dow Jones) sponsored by DC-SLA Chapter
Please RSVP Gregory Bailey at baileyinfospec@gmail.com and Register at: http://units.sla.org/chapter/cdc/committees_files/clicku.html (Limited to 30 people)

* Dine Around
Date:  April 12
Host:  Anne Caputo
Restaurant:  La Tomate
Restaurant Address: 1701 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
Restaurant telephone number:  (202) 667-5505
Restaurant website:  http://latomatebistro.com
Closest Metro station::  Dupont Circle (Red Line)
Arrival time:  6 PM
RSVP:  anne.caputo@dowjones.com, (202) 862-6632

* Dine Around
Date:  April 13
Host:  Jennifer Boettcher
Restaurant:  Hard Times Cafe
Restaurant Address:  3028 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA
Restaurant telephone number:  (703) 528-2233
Restaurant website:  www.hardtimes.com/location/detail.aspx?Locationld=3
Closest Metro station:  Clarendon (Orange Line)
Arrival time:  6:30 PM
RSVP:  boettcher@georgetown.edu
Reserve by April 6
Sponsored by the Business Information Finders Committee of DC/SLA.

* Celebrate International Special Librarians’ Day
Date: April 14 6-8pm
Location: Georgetown University Law Library, 111 G Street, NW, Washington, DC - nearest Metro is Judiciary Square or Union Station
Celebrate International Special Librarian's Day with the DC/SLA International Relations Committee. Our panel of distinguished speakers will discuss various aspects of international librarianship. The evening begins at 6 pm with networking and refreshments. Speakers: Alan Overland, Edna Reid, Dr. Sohair Wastawy, Dean of Libraries at Illinois State and former Chief Librarian of the Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt. Date & time: Thursday, April 14, 6 pm - 8:00 pm Location: Georgetown University Law Library, 111 G Street, NW (nearest Metro is Judiciary Square or Union Station)

$10 Students/Retired/Unemployed Members
$15 Members
$20 Non-members
Register and pay at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ISLD2011

* Dine Around
Date:  April 19
Host:  Lois Ireland
Restaurant:  Chevy's Fresh Mex
Restaurant Address:  1201 South Hayes Street
Arlington, VA
Restaurant telephone number:  (703) 413-8700
Closest Metro station:  Pentagon City (Blue & Yellow Lines)
Arrival time:  6 PM
RSVP:  lois_ireland@freddiemac.com

* Lubuto Library Project’s Zambian Language Literacy Project Brown Bag Lunch
Date: April 20, 12-1pm
Location: Bread for the World Institute, 425 3rd St. SW, Suite 1200, Washington DC 20024
The Lubuto Library Project was one of 12 groups chosen from several hundred applicants worldwide to be awarded a grant from EIFL’s Public Library Innovation Project, for which EIFL received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to encourage innovation with information technology in public libraries. Lubuto's project addresses the critical need that the educational system cannot meet for a means to teach all Zambian children to read in their original language. This same problem is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in countries with dozens, even hundreds, of different languages. Lubuto libraries reach out-of-school children and can help them toward reading by read-aloud and storytelling programs, but tools for reading teaching in Zambian languages are not available. Youth who had been using the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops in Lubuto libraries and experienced Zambian reading teachers have been trained in the OLPC application Etoys and now work each week to create early reading programs in seven Zambian languages. The project creators use six XO 1.5 laptops, which were granted to Lubuto Libraries by the OLPC Foundation. The open source reading programs can run on other platforms and in addition to being made available to Lubuto Library users on XO laptops will be posted on the LubutoCollections.org website to inspire the creation of similar programs in other African countries and languages. Mike Lee of Sugar Labs, Washington DC, USA and One Laptop Per Child organization, Boston, MA, USA and Jane Kinney Meyers, President of the Lubuto Project will present the project, demonstrate some of its output and discuss its impact during a brown bag lunch.

* Dine Around
Date:  April 21
Host:  Susan Fifer Canby
Restaurant:  Jackie's
Restaurant Address:  8081 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, MD
Restaurant telephone number:  (301) 565-9700
Restaurant website:  www.jackiesrestaurant.com
Closest Metro station:  Silver Spring (Red Line)
Arrival time:  6 PM
RSVP:  susanfifercanby@gmail.com
Reserve by April 16.
Sponsored by the Encore Caucus of SLA.

* Moving in Management and Team Leadership Roles Part 2-ClickU
Date: April 26, 1-2:30pm
Location: DowJones- 1025 Connecticut Ave, NW  11th Floor, Suite 1100 - Washington, D.C. 20036- (Metro: Farragut North or Farragut West; between L & K Street on Connecticut)
Guests must present a photo ID to the guard in the lobby.
This session will focus on specific competencies that will help participants make the successful transition to new responsibilities, including balancing priorities and avoiding burnout, even as projects, urgencies and priorities shift; delegating and coaching employees to help them build on their strengths; and communicating at the right time and in the right way.
FREE for SLA members attending at the Onsite location (Dow Jones) sponsored by DC-SLA Chapter.
$25 FEE  for NON-SLA members attending at Onsite location (Dow Jones) sponsored by DC-SLA Chapter
Please RSVP Gregory Bailey at baileyinfospec@gmail.com and Register at: http://units.sla.org/chapter/cdc/committees_files/clicku.html (Limited to 30 people)

* DC/SLA Professional Book Club

Date: April 26 6:30 - 8:30pm

Location: Teaism, 400 8th St. NW - Closest Metro Archives Stop

Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers.

About the book: 

Our discombobulated Internet Age could learn important new tricks from some very old thinkers, according to this incisive critique of online life and its discontents. Journalist Powers bemoans the reigning dogma of digital maximalism that requires us to divide our attention between ever more e-mails, text messages, cellphone calls, video streams, and blinking banners, resulting, he argues, in lowered productivity and a distracted life devoid of meaning and depth. In a nifty and refreshing turn, he looks to ideas of the past for remedies to this hyper-modern predicament: to Plato, who analyzed the transition from the ancient technology of talking to the cutting-edge gadgetry of written scrolls; to Shakespeare, who gave Hamlet the latest in Elizabethan information apps, an erasable notebook; to Thoreau, who carved out solitary spaces amid the press of telegraphs and railroads. The author sometimes lapses into mysticism—In solitude we meet not just ourselves but all other selves—and his solutions, like the weekend-long Internet Sabbaths he and his wife decreed for their family, are small-bore. But Powers deftly blends an appreciation of the advantages of information technology and a shrewd assessment of its pitfalls into a compelling call to disconnect. 

Find it at Amazon - Find it at DCPL

Please RSVP to gsauvey@gmail.com if you plan to attend.

* Association Roundtable Brown Bag Lunch
Date: April 27, 12-1:30pm
Location: TBD
Information discussion of the Association Information Services Caucus. Group meets monthly. Topic TBD

* DC/SLA Fiction Book Club
Date: April 27, 6-7pm
Location: Please RSVP: Barbara Folensbee-Moore at bfolensbee-moore@morganlewis.com
The topic for April will be books that take place in one day - this is within a 24 hour period or on the same actual day.  There are several web sites with very nice lists of books to recommend - see below.
http://www.onlinedegreeprograms.com/blog/2011/11-excellent-novels-that-take-place-all-in-one-day/
http://www.readinasinglesitting.com/2010/11/22/list-books-that-take-place-over-a-single-day/
* Dine Around
Date:  April 27
Host:  Lisa Haakon Pogue
Restaurant:  Bistrot Lafayette
Restaurant Address:  1118 King Street
Alexandria, VA
Restaurant telephone number:  (703) 548-2525
Restaurant website:  www.bistrotlafayette.com
Closest Metro station:  King Street (Blue & Yellow Lines)
Arrival time:  6 PM
RSVP:  lhpogue@hotmail.com, (703) 861-7247

* Dine Around
Date:  April 27
Host:  Peggy Garvin
Restaurant:  Indique Heights
Restaurant Address:  2 Wisconsin Circle
Chevy Chase, MD
Restaurant telephone number:  (301) 656-4822
Restaurant website:  www.indiqueheights.com
Closest Metro station:  Friendship Heights (Red Line)
Arrival time:  6:30 PM
RSVP:  peggy@garvinconsulting.com

* Joint Spring Workshop
Date: April 29, 8:30am - 3:15pm
Location: Library of Congress, Mumford Rm., 6th Fl, Madison Bldg. 101 Independence Ave., SE- Closest Metro Capital South
Do you have a strategic plan for your library? How do you know if your library is supporting your organization's strategic goals? In this time of fiscal uncertainty, how can you develop a strategic plan that will ensure your library is valued and essential to your organization's future?
This one day workshop should help you answer these questions, and, if you don't have a strategic plan for your library already, enable you to have the basic tools to develop one that makes sense in the context of your organizational goals.
Keynote Speaker: DeEtta Jones, DeEtta Jones and Associates, Raynna Bowlby, Associate, Library Management Consulting

$60.00 - Chapter Members
$85.00 - Non-Chapter Members
$25.00 - Students/Retirees/Unemployed
Includes continental breakfast and lunch.
Tax ID number is 13-5404745
Register and pay at: http://units.sla.org/chapter/cdc/events_files/jsw2011.html

A Diverse Universe: Working in the White Spaces

By Eileen Boswell

Local library hero Karen Huffman said something that changed my life. During a Fall 2007 presentation to my information systems class at the Catholic University of America, Karen commented that, “Special librarians work in the white spaces of the organizational chart.” The next day, during an interview with a small non-profit organization, I was asked, “And what do you think the role of a special librarian is in an organization such as ours?” Without missing a beat I replied, “Special librarians work in the white spaces of the organizational chart.” 

Judging by the reaction I got, I may have been the first applicant to deliver a concise answer to that question. I was offered the job, accepted, and immediately contacted Karen to ask, “Who said that?” She told me that Susan Fifer Canby, retired Director of Libraries & Information Services at National Geographic, would often urge library staff to “get into the white spaces.” I later found the reference in a commencement speech Susan gave at the University of Maryland, and in a 2004 Information Outlook article. It is the single bit of wisdom I needed to focus my work in an unstructured, choose-your-own-adventure library position.

While I do a bit of cataloging, some web development, and the occasional research project, my real work has been to get comfortable with a very broad concept of “user needs” and “librarian response.” Sometimes I walk around the office asking people what they are working on so I can plan my next foray into the white spaces. Recently a colleague was lamenting the fact that we never catch things like Distracted Driving Awareness Month (April) or Disability Awareness Month (October) before it’s too late, so I created an “Opportunities Calendar” for staff to share. Our white spaces have also allowed me to draw up a marketing timeline for a website re-launch, draft a Twitter style guide, notarize documents, and plan a national conference session on what census data means for rural transportation. In another organization, the white spaces would look very different, but this is where I am right now.

I loved the day when one of my coworkers needed my library skills to determine how many paratransit trips in Florida last year were rural. But just as satisfying was the day I taught someone how to find the R/G/B values on a project logo so we could reproduce it in web-safe colors. What do your users need?

Eileen Boswell works as Information Specialist at the Community Transportation Association of America. This summer she will be part of the Success Stories of Solos panel at SLA 2011.

DC/SLA Conference Stipend Award Winner

By Diane Schnurrpusch

As chair of the 2011 Awards Committee, it is my honor to announce that the winner of the $1,500 SLA Conference Stipend Award is Janel White, a broadcast librarian at National Public Radio (NPR).  Active in the Association and on the DC SLA Program Planning Committee, she has repeatedly demonstrated hard work, creativity, intelligence, and a sense of humor while coordinating a broad range of events.

Janel was instrumental in hosting three sessions of the 2010 Leadership Lecture Series. She organized a tour of the NPR Library; hosted a program on digitization projects; and helped produce the Cinco de Mayo program, including locating, renting, and setting up a margarita machine.

She helped then President-Elect, Mary Talley, plan the Chapter’s 70^th Anniversary/Volunteer Appreciation event at SLA Headquarters last fall.  She arranged for the speaker, Kee Malesky, and tracked sales of Kee’s book, helped with decorations, and conducted the raffle.  A master of behind-the-scenes details, Janel obtained the refreshments for several of these events. She wrote Chapter blog and newsletter recaps to fill in members who could not attend the programs.  

Janel served on the 2011 SLA Leadership Summit Hospitality Committee.  She solicited volunteers for the registration/hospitality desk at the hotel and the reception at the Navy Memorial.  She updated the wiki with information about the reception, local attractions, transportation, and wifi hot spots.  She prepared the DC Chapter members’ reception invitation, got it posted to the Web site, and ensured that a payment method was in place.  At the Leadership Summit, Janel ran a very successful raffle to offset Chapter costs for the reception.  Lynne McCay, chair of the Leadership Summit Hospitality Committee, praised Janel’s work, saying, “She saw things that needed to be done and she did them – extremely well.  In short, DC/SLA’s strong hospitality showing would not have been possible without Janel.”

Janel isn’t taking a break anytime soon.  In 2011, Janel continues serving on the DC SLA Program Planning Committee and will coordinate the annual “Spend A Day With a Special Librarian.”  She is in her third year on SLA’s Technical Standards Committee.  She is also active in the American Library Association where she was chosen by the New Members Round Table (NMRT) as an ALA Emerging Leader based not only on her involvement with the Round Table, but on her growing involvement locally in SLA.  Janel has served NMRT as a program planner and Secretary and is currently running for Vice-President/President-Elect.

Janel’s leadership and can-do attitude made her a logical choice for the 2011 SLA Conference Stipend award.  The Awards Committee wants to help her realize her goal of attending the conference to continue to network with other SLA members, and build upon the leadership and planning skills that her DC SLA committee work has advanced. 

A Diverse Universe: Creating a Patent Reference Librarian Position with Intellogist

By Kristin Whitman

I came to a librarianship in a very backwards way.  I worked in patent searching, which is a small, niche industry where almost no one has an MLIS.   Patent searchers need advanced technical degrees and an understanding of patent law; most have master’s degrees in technical fields such as mechanical engineering and biochemistry, and some even have JDs or have passed the patent bar exam.  With all that necessary education, patent searching librarians are a rarity.

I was hired from within my patent searching company to write cParitical reviews about patent search systems, and to create comparison tables and reports to publish on our website.  I spent the next several years working steadily to product Intellogist (http://www.intellogist.com/), an online review site for that patent searching industry.  As you’ve probably already guessed, evaluating patent search tools requires the skills, background and knowledge of a librarian – and I had no idea!  I was deep in the weeds grappling with concepts like collection domain and scope, interface design, and controlled indexing before I finally realized that this was a degree I needed to have. 

From that point forward I felt that it would be almost irresponsible of me to continue doing my job without the proper training.  Location was a problem – there was no accredited library school in Virginia, and Catholic and Maryland would have presented too much of a commuting burden.  When I finally stumbled across my first fully online degree program, I was thrilled. The flexibility of asynchronous, fully online scheduling meant I could do my coursework whenever and wherever I needed.  I enrolled at Rutgers, and the faculty there has been a blessing in so many ways – the program is thriving, and everyone there is really dedicated to preparing the students to jump right into the real world of librarianship and get our hands dirty.  

Thanks to my education, I was able to provide the highest possible quality work on Intellogist.  In addition, people within the company started to see me as an unofficial reference resource, and come to me to discuss their search problems.  I already knew that I would love reference work from my past days in a customer service position: helping people gives me a natural high.  Because I was seeing a need within the company, I worked with my boss to design a new job for myself as a librarian.  We envisioned the rollout of a Landon IP Reference Desk, and worked for months to bring our idea to fruition.  I knew the company needed this kind of support, but my challenge was bringing the message to everyone else!  

When we finally rolled out our Reference Desk service, I immediately received over 170 reference requests in the first month.  We’re still going strong, and I am so proud and so happy to have created my dream job within the company by showing them what I can really do for them.  It seems to me to be an instance of librarians proving their value by addressing underlying information needs that no one else at an organization can see.  In my opinion, I would not have had the courage to do this had I not been involved in SLA since 2009, and heard the underlying message: show your employers what you can do.  Show them what librarianship can mean to them.  My very great thanks to all the SLA members who are making the organization a source of support and professional development.

Kristin Whitman is a new reference librarian and a co-creator of Intellogist.com.  She is currently in her last semester at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University.

Are You Future Ready? Library Leaders Discussion

What do you think the future holds for our society?  For our profession?  Three distinguished local library leaders will explore these questions and more during a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 15.  Come be part of the conversation!

 

Our speakers are Laura Soto-Barra of National Public Radio, Pamela Tripp-Melby of the International Monetary Fund and Sue Woodson of Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University.

Date & time: Tuesday, March 15, 6 pm - 8:00 pm

Networking and light refreshments at 6 pm; program starts at 6:30 pm.

Location: NPR, 635 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Closest Metro stations: Mount Vernon Sq.- Convention Center (Yellow/Green) or Gallery Place - Chinatown (Red/Yellow/Green)

To register and pay, go to  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/futureready

$10 Students/Retired/Unemployed Members
$15 Members
$25 Non-members

A Diverse Universe: Knowledge Management at the US Institute of Peace

By Gretchen Sauvey

When I started library school, I don’t think that I could have defined the phrase “knowledge management” without guessing wildly. Even now, having worked in knowledge management for several years, I still find it difficult to succinctly explain my job to people. At work I’m part database administrator, part tech support, part taxonomist, part researcher, and part teacher. It’s not quite what I envisioned when I started on this path, and certainly not the academic library reference desk job I fantasized about when applying to grad school.

Luckily for me, despite its non-traditional nature, my job still lets me do all of the things that made me excited to become a librarian in the first place:

• Education – I teach technology training classes to Institute staff and create learning materials such as video tutorials and instructional guides.
• Web design – I’ve spent many hours recently on creating mock-ups for a redesign of our intranet wiki’s main page and experimenting with new widgets and extensions to make our content more dynamic.
• Information organization – A large part of my time is spent managing custom databases, a document management system, and internal taxonomies, all with the goal of helping staff find what they need when they need it.

I even get to do research, combing our own extensive projects database and commercial citation databases to track the Institute’s activities and impact. Best of all, I get to do all these things at the same time, which perfectly suits my jack-of-all-trades nature.

I can’t say that my job is perfect, because there are some demanding challenges. Unlike a more traditional library, where the world of information to be organized has some recognizable boundaries, in knowledge management the scope and focus of our work is constantly shifting. In addition, my department is often the public face of major technological changes for staff at the Institute, which can make us the least-liked people in the office some days. And we operate on a shoestring budget, with our own time frequently the only resource at our disposal.

Details aside, ultimately my role is to help my colleagues capture and share what they know so that the work of the Institute can be done more effectively. It’s the rare job that lets you literally advance world peace, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to do exactly that.

Gretchen Sauvey is a Knowledge Management Specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, an independent national institution established and funded by Congress. She also blogs at http://gretchens-world.blogspot.com.