DC/SLA Tour of NPR Library and Studio, 9/11/2010

By Chris Vestal

All things considered, librarians are information aficionados, so it’s no surprise dozens of chapter members jumped at the chance to go on a guided tour of NPR.

Members gathered on Saturday, 11 September 2010, at NPR’s headquarters in Washington DC. Chapter President-Elect Mary Talley introduced members to several NPR librarians who led the tour, including Janel White, Maureen Clements, and Lauren Sin. Talley also introduced members to long-time NPR librarian, Kee Malesky. Malesky recently wrote a book All Facts Considered, a collection of facts she’s come across in her years as a reference librarian. Her book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

The tour started off NPR’s Broadcast Library. This library houses archival copies of NPR’s broadcasts both in cd and reel-to-reel tape formats. About fifteen librarians work in this area. Librarians retrieve archival programming, music, or other audio content of interest to reporters. In fact, during the tour a reporter working on an obituary came to the library to request a copy of all programs the deceased had spoken on. There’s also a collection of over 70,000 music cds and records NPR staff can request. The library has a very experienced music librarian, Robert Goldstein, who can answer a request like “music about snow” by indicating which album and then what track on the album (and even what portion of the track) would be most useful.

The next stop on the tour was the Digital Media Music Unit, which is home to the podcasts All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts. Musicians regularly perform mini-live concerts here which are in turn filmed and available for free download or streaming at iTunes or NPR’s website here.

In addition to the Broadcast Librarians, NPR also has Reference Librarians who are embedded with reporters. They train staff on how to use an internal wiki which links to several commercial databases, AP Style Guide, homegrown databases of NPR programming transcripts, a pronunciation guide, and information on important people and events. They also help reporters with fact checking stories and gathering background material. Each librarian is associated with specific NPR programming and sometimes receive on-air credits. For instance Malesky is associated with the weekend news programs and has received numerous on air-credits over the years.

For a final treat, members were able to watch a live broadcast of Weekend All Things Considered in NPR studio 2-A (the Daniel Schorr Studio). Following the tour half of the group networked and ate over tapas at La Tasca.

DC/SLA group at NPR

DC/SLA member Jay Santiago at NPR front desk

Defense Professionals Learn Their ABCs -- March 22, 2010

By Chris Vestal

It's no bombshell that military leaders and scholars have unique information needs. However, it is surprising to learn how similar their research process is to more traditional settings.

Librarians from around the country received helpful pointers in military research on March 22, 2010, during the Defense Technical Information Center’s 2010 Conference session, ABCs of Military Resources, co-sponsored by DC/SLA’s Military Librarians’ Group. Lily McGovern, a DC/SLA chapter member from National Defense University, and Greta Marlatt, from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, co-taught the session.

McGovern guided attendees through the process of conducting military research, quickly pointing out how similar it is to any other research process. “Techniques you’d use for any reference query can work in an area not familiar to you,” she explained. The first stage in the research process was the reference interview. Researchers need to pay careful attention to what military service the patron is interested in as acronyms could have multiple meanings across different service organizations. The next step is thinking about where you could find the needed information. McGovern recommended thinking about what organizations might collect or generate the needed information. For military or defense information, McGovern said using specialized databases is usually the best route to take. However, she also recommended using regular search engines and limiting results to .mil or .gov domains to cut down on the number of false drops. One interesting contrast to traditional research is that military information professionals may have to consider whether or not the requested information is classified or restricted in some way. The patron’s clearance level will affect whether or not the information professional will perform the research. If the patron has a high enough clearance the researcher may have to leave his or her regular work-station and search on a computer approved for viewing restricted information.

After attendees got a feel for how the process worked, Marlatt reviewed a myriad of useful specialized resources. These sources ranged from the webpages of libraries that are part of a military graduate program, to “think tanks” and even “WikiLeaks” (a wiki dedicated to encouraging and disseminating leaked information, http://wikileaks.org/). According to Marlatt, when using any of these sources, searchers should explore them as much as possible, even the ones that say they are restricted access only. Marlatt explained that while many of them do have sections that are restricted or pay-only access, if you take the time to mine through them there is often quite a bit of freely available information. For example, she cited the RAND Corporation’s website (http://www.rand.org/) where links to purchasing reports are prominently displayed at the top of the page, but near the bottom of the page you'll find links to view the same reports for free.

Following the session, attendees divided up into smaller groups and had dinner and lively conversation at five Old Town Alexandria restaurants.

To view the presentation with active links to all the recommended resources visit http://tinyurl.com/yzuwpe3

Picture 1. Attendees signing in to the ABCs of Military Research:

Picture 2. Attendees enjoying dinner after the Military Research event in Alexandria, VA:

Thanks to Our Volunteers in 2010 -- from DC/SLA President James King

I would like to take a moment to thank the 90+ volunteers who have already signed up to help in nearly 40 different committee and volunteer positions this year. Check out the official DC/SLA committee page on the chapter site to see who's doing what.

An active and diverse group of volunteers is critical to our success as we move into the second century of SLA and strive towards our vision of being "the recognized model of excellence as it prepares knowledge leaders for the future." Volunteering in DC/SLA provides you with a great opportunity to network with other professionals in the area and gives you a chance to develop or improve upon skills that can also be used in your career.

Care to join us on this journey? Please review the list of DC/SLA volunteer opportunities at this site: http://signupgenius.com/go/chapter

In particular, we need help with our dine-arounds. Last year, we had a record-setting 22 dine-arounds all over our region with between 4-24 people at each location. Chris Vestal, our Dine-around Coordinator in 2009, has agreed to manage our Chapter Notes newsletter (and is doing a terrific job) so we need to find someone who can take over for what he did last year. The Dine-Around Coordinator advertises for dine-around hosts and coordinate the dates with the chapter’s master calendar. A Dine-Around Host (which we also need) chooses a dinner location and manages the reservation for that location. If you love to talk and eat (not necessarily at the same time) please consider helping us!

Our biggest and newest committee is the January 2011 SLA Leadership Summit local host committee! SLA has announced that the DC Chapter will play host to this winter leadership training meeting – the first time in nearly 12 years. This also falls less than two years since the SLA Annual Conference was here in DC so we have lots of experience hosting but will need lots of hands to make this happen. If you would like to help or lead this effort, we need help with finding sponsors, planning the receptions, updating the local host wiki, planning dine-arounds, and so much more!

If you have any questions about any of the chapter activities listed on the volunteer site, please feel free to contact me.

-- James King, James.King@nih.gov