SLA Illinois Chapter Connecting People and Information

Click on a title to read more about this year's recipients and their contributions. Thank you all for your continual service to our chapter.
Library Partner Award: Buzzy Basch
Up and Coming Award: Laura Fu
Author Award: Carla Owens
Web 2.0 Award: Dianna Wiggins
Library Champion Award: Nancy Maloney
Outstanding Achievement Award: Katrina Perez

Library Partner Award is selected by the team who collects sponsors and funds to allow us to have meetings at a reasonable rate. If you think our meeting prices are high, imagine what they would be if we didn’t have sponsorship from our partners. This is a tough decision because we appreciate ALL contributions.

In 2009 we recognize Buzzy Basch, president of Prenax Basch Subscriptions, who has been a long-time sponsor of the SLA IL chapter's Annual Business Meeting. This year was no different as once again, Buzzy signed on to be the September meeting sponsor. Although the meeting date was changed and Buzzy wasn’t able to attend in person, Prenax Basch provided the funds. Not only did Prenax Basch's generous sponsorship help cover the costs of the Annual Business Meeting in September, we boosted attendance at the November 6 Innovate, Create, Succeed Workshop! Buzzy Basch's donation paid for the cost of an Amazon Kindle which was raffled at the seminar. Feedback from the seminar included this: "one of the best workshops for special librarians ever." Thank you Buzzy, and Prenax Basch for your support.

Up and Coming Award is presented to a relatively new Illinois Chapter member who through work and professional involvement shows promise of becoming an outstanding member of the profession. Our 2009 up and comer is currently a student at Dominican University. Laura Fu is an example of librarianship expanding to non-traditional media; she identified librarianship as the necessary tool chest for her chosen profession even though that isn’t what her employers have called her positions. Laura began her career as a news archivist in Baltimore and now works here in Chicago in video asset management. Laura has designed a system for cataloging all in-house materials and recently pitched the idea for a new service at her employer: stock footage provider. It was received well and will be another responsibility of hers in 2010!

Laura has participated on the 2010 program planning committee for SLA Illinois and has also attended the Association of Moving Image Archivists conference.

What sealed the decision of the Awards Committee in favor of Laura is this: even as a student at Dominican, Laura has provided internships for other students for three semesters. She is committed to bringing recent graduates into her unique environment to expand their education and gain experience. As Laura says, “We rely a great deal on our interns, in testing, implementation and application. I’ve really enjoying managing their participation, mentoring them as new members of the field and also learning a great deal for my own career.”

In recognition of her entry into librarianship, paving the way in uncharted territory, and generosity in bringing others along on the journey, we are proud to present to her the Up and Comer Award, 2009.

Author Award is awarded to the Illinois Chapter member who has published noteworthy work within the "Informant", other professional literature, a trade journal, popular press, or in-house publication. This award most often goes to someone who publishes in the field of librarianship or information science, but we had a unique opportunity this year to recognize a long-time Illinois chapter member who has served on numerous committees and as a past president and who now has what she calls a “dream job.” This dream has included the opportunity to co-author the book Brookfield Zoo and the Chicago Zoological Society with Doug Deuchler.

Doug explains the process in an interview in the Wednesday Journal on June 16, 2009.

“When the Arcadia Publishing company heard I was working part-time as a Motor Safari tram guide at Brookfield Zoo, an editor approached me about doing a new book for their "Images of America" series. You may have seen these paperback illustrated histories of various neighborhoods, communities and towns with their vintage sepia photos on the covers. I'd previously done books on Oak Park, Cicero, Berwyn, and Maywood. But the Arcadia folks won't really rest until every corner of the entire nation has its own book. So they told me they were especially intent on adding a Brookfield Zoo title to their list of publications in time to celebrate the zoo's 75th anniversary this summer. Was I interested? Of course I said yes...A book sounded like a wonderful project, and this time I would be working with a co-author, Carla W. Owens, zoo archivist and manager of library services. We made a good creative team. During the course of completing the book, Carla and I found a lot of amazing stuff. We located photos and publicity materials that had not been seen in seven decades. In the "attic" level of one of the big commissary barns on the south side of the zoo, we discovered displays and souvenirs dating back to the early 1930s.”

Carla, congratulations for becoming a published author and for demonstrating the versality and variety of skills inherent in information professionals.

Web 2.0 Award will be awarded to an individual chapter member or their Information Center who has used Web 2.0 technology for either the marketing, promotion, communication, knowledge management, or training efforts of their own organization or for the Illinois Chapter of SLA.

In Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges by Andrew McAfee, the author describes the trend in the use of technology to bring people together and let them interact, without specifying how they should do so. People collaborate in order to get work done and solve problems. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, wikis, and blogs offer significant improvements in areas such as generating, capturing and sharing knowledge (isn’t that us?); letting people find helpful colleagues (we do that!); tapping into new sources of information and expertise (hello!); and harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.”

Diana Wiggins has been at the forefront of modeling Enterprise 2.0 with an SLA Ililinois chapter Facebook page, promoting the online discussion of alignment, tweeting on professional issues with more than 100 followers, and on a more personal note, creating a Caring Bridge on steroids site for family members dealing with a serious illness. Diana is traveling this week and is not with us physically, but I cannot think of a better way to share this announcement with her than by using technology to send her congratulations. If you Tweet congratulations, please use the hashtag #slail.

Library Champion Award is presented to the parent organization, individual or other entity that has shown support to special libraries/information centers through speaking, writing, or advocacy. This year our library champion contributed to the SLA centennial celebration when she used her personal contacts to request a proclamation from Richard M. Daley, mayor of the city of Chicago, and congratulations from the Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian, Jesse White, honoring SLA's 100th anniversary. At the May 27^th monthly meeting, in addition to having a panel of speakers addressing how we can align our services with strategic business needs to maximize our value, we also had a special celebration at that meeting with centennial related books & pens as prizes, party hats and favors, and a very special cake to celebrate the centennial. Next to the cake when it was on display were the original congratulatory letters from Mayor Daley and Jesse White.

Nancy Maloney helped to make the SLA IL chapter celebration of SLA national's centennial anniversary extra special. At the May meeting we enjoyed seeing and reading the actual letters she requested and received from Daily and White, and in addition, both letters are clickable from the SLA webpage where there are just a few greetings listed from other national politicos.

Nancy has been the Electronic Resources Librarian on assignment from Library Associates Companies at BP in Naperville, IL since 2005. She is a member of the WebJunction Illinois Advisors Team, the WebJunction Illinois Subject Curator for Special Librarians, and she participates on DuPage Library System's Technology and Marketing Committees. Nancy is also a state of Illinois Synergist; Synergy is the Illinois Library Leadership Initiative Program. Nancy has spoken at ILA, the Illinois Library Association annual conference, on marketing twice. A report on the effort of the BP Library to do "buzz marketing" resulted in a recent mention of Nancy in the new ALA editions book called, Building a Buzz: Libraries & Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Peggy Barber and Linda Wallace. Thank you, Nancy.

Outstanding Achievement Award is awarded to an Illinois Chapter member or Committee who has exhibited outstanding, unique or beyond-the-call-of-duty service to the Chapter. As it happens, this year’s outstanding achievement award winner is no stranger to the podium -- in 2006, the Outstanding Achievement Award went to the group contributing to the vision and hard work of the Informant Committee in developing, implementing, and maintaining a new generation communication tool for the Illinois Chapter. In fact, a search of the SLA Illinois web site illustrates how wide and deep our Outstanding Achievement Award winner’s participation is in chapter activities. It ranges from hosting dine-arounds to volunteering for committee assignments to coordinating a web site conversion to coordinating yet another web site conversion to attending the 2007 Leadership Summit and to accepting the presidency of our chapter. As one contributor stated: “Not to take away what others have done, but she really turned it up a notch!”

Katrina Perez, in recognition of your years of service with our web site, the achievements of the chapter under your watch as President, for your grace under pressure, your ability to include so many others in chapter activities, and for your contributions that are sure to follow, congratulations for Outstanding Achievement. submitted by Bobbie Goering, Joyce Fedezcko, Penny Sympson