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.

By Suzanne Arist, Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

Karen Krupka has served as Treasurer of our Chapter for three years, managing the Chapter’s finances. She explains that much of the Chapter’s income comes in an allotment from SLA headquarters, determined by the number of members in the Chapter.

By Suzanne Arist, Member of Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

The most interesting aspects of Ramona Howerton’s job are that she is constantly learning something new and finds her customers’ information requests to be interesting. Howerton, President of the SLA Illinois Chapter, is the Library Services Manager for Duff & Phelps, a financial services/consulting firm.

By Suzanne Arist, Informant Committee Member and Reference Librarian

Laura Ikens is President-Elect of the Illinois Chapter of the SLA. She is a Senior Research Specialist in the Legal Technology Resources Center at the American Bar Association. The ABA is the largest voluntary professional association in the world with over 411,000 members.

Lorene Kennard, our Chapter’s Professional Development chair, is the solo librarian with Morningstar Inc., a leading independent provider of investment research. Her path to Morningstar was not a direct one.

Suzanne Arist, Internal Communications Committee member and Reference Librarian

Ken Des Jardins, the First Year Director of SLA-Illinois, is a research specialist at Kirkland & Ellis LLP where he has been employed since October 2005.

Byline: By Suzanne Arist

Karen is the Director of Knowledge Management for Arc Worldwide. She is responsible for all secondary source data and harvesting internal knowledge and insights. Arc Worldwide is a global marketing services company. It is part of the Paris-based Publicis Groupe network. Headquartered in Chicago, Arc Worldwide is comprised of 1,300 employees in 42 offices and 36 countries. The company offers expertise in four disciplines: direct/database, interactive, promotional, and shopper marketing.

Karen does not have a physical library. However, she has an intranet page through which she serves over 1,300 people in 42 offices around the world. It is through the company intranet that users access data sources and request assistance from Karen. She has a Master of Science in Information degree from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in history from Loyola University in Chicago. While on the job, Karen acquired many of the needed skills but she also attends conferences including: SMRB Future of Information Summit, Trendwatching.com Annual Road Show, Yankelovich State of the Consumer, Forrester Consumer Forum, and others.

by Suzanne Arist, North Suburban Public Library

LAURA BARNES, CHAIR OF SLA- IL GOVERNMENT RELATIONS COMMMITTEE

Laura Barnes is the Librarian/Clearinghouse Specialist at the Illinois Waste Management and Research Center. She is a solo librarian with a ten hour per week student assistant. She runs the library, maintains the content on the library’s website (including an environmental news web log). Also, she manages publications distribution, which has become less time consuming because all of the Center’s publications are now available on the web. Laura is a consultant to several Environmental Protection Agency information sharing contracts that the Center is involved with.

By Suzanne Arist, North Suburban Public Library

By Suzanne Arist, North Suburban Public Library

Bridget MacMillan is a Librarian Relations Consultant with LexisNexis. Her role is to work with librarians in the legal arena, including law firms, law schools, courts, and agencies. Through group presentations and individual training sessions, she keeps librarians up to date on the LexisNexis research system. In addition she listens to concerns and suggestions from librarians and reports those to management teams at her company.

Bridget has worked at LexisNexis for four and a half years. Prior to LexisNexis, she was the librarian at an intellectual property law firm in Chicago, Marshall O‘Toole Gerstein Murray & Borun, for almost three years. Before that, she was a Business Researcher at Ernst & Young in Chicago for almost a year. Her MLS is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to graduate school, Bridget worked in Cleveland, Ohio as a fundraiser and special event planner for a number of non-profit organizations.