By Suzanne Arist, Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

We all eagerly read Judy Alspach’s concise, informative weekly emails. She keeps us abreast of SLA Illinois Chapter events through the SLA-ILINFO mailing list. Recently she was the well-deserved recipient of the chapter’s Library Communications and Marketing Award for her committee work in Public Relations, principally the mailing list.

Venerable Consortium

Judy is the Global Resources Network Project Coordinator at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), in Hyde Park. CRL acquires, stores, preserves and disseminates information to universities in the U.S. and abroad. CRL was started over 50 years ago by ten large Midwestern universities as a deposit library for some of their rarely used collections. CRL's preservation initiative entails working with other libraries to archive  print and digitized material and to record documents on microfilm.

It has grown and now holds over 4 million items and has over 240 member institutions. Most of the members are North American academic libraries. Strengths of CRL’s collection include foreign dissertations, newspapers and government documents. CRL has 10 degreed librarians out of a full-time staff of about 40.

International Projects

As Global Resources Network Project Coordinator, Judy works with several groups of academic libraries on collaborative access and preservation projects. Each of the groups concentrates on a specific region of the world such as Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. The groups are made up of librarians in North America who specialize in materials from and about these areas of the world.

In the past, Judy was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines and she worked at a non-profit organization that coordinated international exchange programs for high school students.

Also she worked for several years for a company that provides project management training to Fortune 500 companies. Other past jobs include working in a bookstore and at Northwestern University’s library.

New Career Suited To Interests

Judy has always enjoyed libraries. Three years ago, she decided to make a career change at which point she went to library school at Dominican University. Since she had always gravitated toward work that has an international component, her current job feels just right.

She has a Master’s degree in European history and studied for a year in Germany during the program. While in the Peace Corps, she learned a Philippine language. Her facility and familiarity with languages has been extremely helpful with her job.

When not at work Judy likes to cook, read, watch Big Ten football and she is learning to play the guitar and banjo. She and her husband enjoy going to sporting events and playing Frisbee.

Contact Judy Alspach at eckoff@crl.edu.  Contact Suzanne Artist at suzarist@sbcglobal.net.