Member Profile

Congratulations to SLA Illinois' 2009 Award Winners!

mmayes — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:46:56 -0500

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 didnâ€™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 wasnâ€™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 isnâ€™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, â€œWe rely a great deal on our interns, in testing, implementation and application. Iâ€™ve really enjoying managing their participation, mentoring them as new members of the field and also learning a great deal for my own career.â€

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 â€œdream job.â€ 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.

â€œWhen 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.â€

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 Organizationâ€™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 (isnâ€™t that us?); letting people find helpful colleagues (we do that!); tapping into new sources of information and expertise (hello!); and harnessing the â€œwisdom of crowds.â€

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 yearâ€™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 winnerâ€™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: â€œNot to take away what others have done, but she really turned it up a notch!â€

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

Andrea Tillander, Chair, Communications Commitee

Pat McCarthy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:25:15 -0400

Andrea Tillander has graciously accepted the position of Chair of the Communications Committee starting with the upcoming Fall issue of The Informant.

Andrea is the Assistant Librarian at Clausen Miller P.C. in Chicago. Before joining Clausen Miller, she worked as a Conflicts Analyst and Library Assistant at Bodman LLP and as an Account Executive at AutoFocus Automotive Advertising Detroit. Andrea holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree with a concentration in Special Libraries from Wayne State University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Michigan-Dearborn. At the University of Michigan, Andrea was a contributor to the universityâ€™s literary journal and worked as a freelance book editor. Andrea is an active member of the Communications Committee and serves as Contributing Editor for the print edition of The Informant. She was the recipient of the Illinois Chapterâ€™s Up and Coming Award in December 2008.

The Communications Committee is a talented, creative, and hard-working group of dedicated members that publish a great quarterly newsletter for our association. If you are interested in joining this group, thereâ€™s always room for more writers and editors. Itâ€™s an opportunity to network with interesting colleagues, improve/use your communication skills, and provide a great service.

Youâ€™ve Got (Special) Mail

Informant — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:17:15 -0400

By Suzanne Arist, Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

We all eagerly read Judy Alspachâ€™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 chapterâ€™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 archiveÂ 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 CRLâ€™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 Universityâ€™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 Masterâ€™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.Â Contact Suzanne Artist at suzarist@sbcglobal.net.

Beyond Paying The Bills

Informant — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:13:21 -0500

By Suzanne Arist, Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

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

That money covers most of the chapterâ€™s expenses, like the web site, awards, conference stipends, and more, but not meetings. Chapter meetings are run to break even. The fees we pay for meetings generally cover food. So meeting sponsorship is important for gratuities and audio-visual equipment.

Meeting Services Automated

During Karenâ€™s tenure on the Chapterâ€™s Executive Board, it has initiated Survey Monkey for meetings registration and PayPal for members who choose to pay online for meetings.

Karen generates financial reports using Quicken. The Executive Board reviews them at its monthly meetings. The Board uses these to determine how best to allocate funds. The Board works with the Budget Committee Chair, JanetÂ Hartmann, and her staff, to create a Chapter Budget.

Over the years, Karen has served on various committees in the Illinois Chapter, including Hospitality and Chapter Manual (now Recommended Practices). She has held positions in the Legal Division , both on committees (Division Manual, Annual Conference Program Chair, and Newsletter) and on the Executive Board as Treasurer.

In A Well-Seasoned Firm

Recently Karen began a new job as Technical Services Librarian with the law firm McGuireWoods LLP. The firm is over 170 years old and is one of the largest law firms in the United States. It has offices coast to coast in the U.S. and in Europe.Â The firm practices various types of law including corporate, healthcare and employee benefits packages. All the offices in the U.S. except Pittsburgh have library staff.Â

The Chicago staff of McGuireWoods includes a Library Supervisor, Reference Librarian and a Technical Assistant in addition to Karen. At McGuireWoods, Karen works with a print collection that includes many books and serials common to large law firms. Her library also has print material on specialized topics.

Prior to her work as a technical services librarian, Karen was a reference librarian with a law firm for 22 years. She gradually added technical services responsibilities. Eventually she joined a Technical Services Roundtable under the auspices of the Chicago Association of Law Libraries and took classes to familiarize herself with technical services, which became the main focus of her work.

Unseen Yet Necessary Part of Special Libraries

Both Karenâ€™s B.A. and M.A. degrees were from what was then known as Rosary College, now Dominican University. Her B.A. was in Home Economics. She spent a number of years in retail management before enrolling in Library School.

When not at work, Karen sings in a choir at a community college. The choir has three concerts a year, one on Veteranâ€™s Day, one on Christmas and one in the spring.Â She does water aerobics at her local park district facility. And she crochets and does needlepoint.

â€œI suspect that many library school students may not realize that there are technical services positions in special libraries," Karen advises, "so I would encourage them to contact someone in the field while they are still in school. There probably will be someone willing to mentor them and to explain what they do, so that they can take some appropriate coursework.

She encourages librarians to attend meetings and be active in their professional associations, no matter which one they feel is appropriate, adding "I have recently rediscovered the value of networking and highly recommend it.â€ She stresses, â€œVolunteer for something. Youâ€™ll be surprised at how much fun it can be.â€

Contact Suzanne Arist at suzarist@sbcglobal.net.

'Constantly Learning'

Informant — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:13:33 -0400

By Suzanne Arist, Member of Informant Committee and Reference Librarian

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

'BRANDED BAGELS' ANYONE?

At Duff & Phelps, often the information she must provide predates the World Wide Web, and it is difficult and occasionally impossible to locate some print information. Requests range from projections for core inflation to market share data for branded bagels.

This is the sort of information she delivers in aÂ firm which provides valuation and consulting as well as investment banking services. The firmâ€™s main library is in Chicago. It contains around 5,000 print titles and subscribes to over 75 electronic databases. Ramonaâ€™s library serves the entire company which is worldwide.

Ramonaâ€™s undergraduate degree is in special education. After doing various jobs, including teaching learning-disabled students, she went to library school at the University ofÂ North Texas. Before enrolling there, she knew she wanted to work in a corporate environment.

After learning about Special Libraries, she decided to pursue her MLS. While in library school, she did an internship in a Special Library. She received her MLS in 1996. Upon graduation, she worked at Kerr-McGee Library in Oklahoma City.Â Since moving to Chicago, Ramona has worked primarily for Duff & Phelps.

USING EXISTING AND FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES

Duff & Phelps has changed drastically in size since she has been there. The company grew from 150 employees to almost 900 employees. It has been a challenge for library staff to merge resources and to get the additional employees accustomed to having a library and the centralized ordering of material.

Ramona finds she is doing less research (which she loves) and more managerial work. Yet she anticipates that her library will be using both existing and future technologies to provide information for end users in new and unique ways.

Ramona joined the SLA as a student member while in library school. When she moved to Chicago to find work, she attended SLA meetings to meet others in the profession. Initially she volunteered to process payments from vendors sponsoring Chapter meetings. Then she served on the Meeting Planning Committee and became active in SLA Cares. Last year she stepped in as President upon Priscilla Stultzâ€™s move to the west coast.

PREPARED ON MANY SUBJECTS

Ramona finds she is almost always at work, but when she is not at work she spends time with her pets, reads, attends plays and movies, visits museums and enjoys festivals in and around Chicago.

She has advice for any librarian who wants to work at a financial organization. The prospective librarian should keep up on industry events, learn the databases used in financial firms, and be prepared to answer questions on many different subjects.

Contact Romona Howerton at ramona.howerton@duffandphelps.com

Legal Technology as a Service

Informant — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:30:46 -0400

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.

The association provides law school accreditation, continuing legal education, information about law, programming to assist lawyers and judges with their work and projects to improve the legal system for the public. The Chicago office of the ABA has about 700 employees.

Laura and the two other LTRC staffâ€”all three are former law librariansâ€”serve ABA members and others who call the associationâ€™s hotline or email questions. The Legal Technology Resource Center staff answer questions regarding the use of technology in law offices.

Since most attorneys are either solo practitioners or work in small firms, they donâ€™t have information technology staff, so they utilize the LTRCâ€™s expertise. To further assist these attorneys, the LTRC conducts continuing education seminars on technology for law offices. LTRC staff also give interviews to the press on timely legal topics.

Typical reference questions range from â€œWhat kind of legal-specific software is appropriate for Macs?â€ to â€œHow can we go to a paperless office?â€ to â€œIâ€™m starting my own law firm--what kind of technology do I need?â€

ENTRY INTO LEGAL TECHNOLOGY

Laura has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University in Economics. She worked in securities, banking, investments, and law. Her employment experience includes management of the securities vault for the Midwest Stock Exchange, now the Chicago Stock Exchange, and a support role for high net-worth clients of Stein Roe Investment Counsel.

While at Stein Roe, Laura had what she describes as an epiphany, and began library school. She attended the University of Illinois at Champaign via the LEEP program, their distance learning program. Still in school, Laura took a position with Joanne Kiley at Michael, Best & Friedrich and later moved to the ABA.

There have been some changes at the LTRC during the two years Laura has been there. Changes have occurred in electronic discovery and records management. The LTRC staff use a wiki to share information and the staff has moved its monthly newsletter to a proprietary blog.

Laura anticipates her departmentâ€™s use will grow as technology proliferates. Attorneys will need LTRCâ€™s help just to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.

WEALTH OF EXPERTISE

Laura brings great expertise to her role as President-Elect of the Illinois Chapter of the SLA. She is responsible for meeting planning. This includes book-clubs, dine-arounds, programming, continuing education, and dinner arrangements. As President-Elect, Laura is learning more about the organization on a chapter and national level so she will be prepared to assume the duties of President in 2008.

Last year Laura was the Public Relations Committee Chair. She implemented the new weekly calendar email and developed a PR plan. Prior to that, she was co-chair of Dinner Arrangements Committee. Laura has been a member since she was a library school student. She signed up as a student member with every library association to learn what each was doing.

At the national level of SLA, Laura organized a program with Michael St. Onge. He is the Senior Librarian Relations Consultant for LexisNexis.

Her writing has been published. She co-authored an article with Joanne Kiley for the Legal Information Alert and wrote articles for Law Technology News. She writes "Trend Reports" and "Executive Summary" for the ABA Legal Technology Survey.

The LTRC surveys about 30,000 members of ABA who are attorneys in private practice and the attorneys provide information about their use of technology. Then the LTRC produces a five-volume compilation of the results. Laura does the number-crunching, creates the product, and writes all of the analysis pieces for the survey.

â€˜ASSOCIATIONS ARE GREAT PLACESâ€™

When not at work, Laura takes humanities classes at the University of Chicago in the Basic Program. She reads a lot and is learning to knit. She goes to a gym and has run half marathons. Also she volunteers for the Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network occasionally with her husband, a double lung recipient, and also for the American Lung Association. And she finds time to socialize with friends and family.

Advice Laura would give to a library school student who wants to work with an association, would be: â€œLearn the structure of the organization, so that you know how you would fit in. Association work is very different from corporate work, and it helps to know what youâ€™re getting into.â€

When asked to recall an anecdote that would be of interest to Informant readers, she described the September SLA Chapter meeting. The keynote speakerâ€™s flight to Chicago was cancelled because of bad weather. She immediately found a replacement speaker from the Chapterâ€™s membership and the program went on without a hitch. Illinois Chapter members, like librarians in general, are undaunted by obstacles.

Reach Laura Ikens at ikensl@staff.abanet.org.

Member Profile: Lorene Kennard

Informant — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:07:34 -0400

By Suzanne Arist, SLA Illinois Internal Communications and Reference Librarian

Lorene Kennard, our Chapterâ€™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.

The library, the only one in the company, was established at Morningstar in the late 1980s, but Lorene is its first professional librarian, serving Morningstar employees throughout the world. Her main clients, though, are the approximately 900 employees in the Chicago office. She also writes a column in a monthly e-newsletter that is sent to Morningstar.com Library Edition subscribers.

DRAWN TO SPECIAL LIBRARIANSHIP

Lorene has an undergraduate degree in Communications and English from Illinois State University and a MLIS from the University of South Carolina. Prior to attending library school, she held a variety of health insurance-related positions at Metlife/MetraHealth/UnitedHealthcare for almost seven years. While in library school, Lenore supervised the interlibrary-loan department at Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina.

Initially Lorene went to library school with the goal of working in a public library, but found a mentor in a corporate library. Her library projects then were about corporate libraries. Upon graduating, Lorene interviewed with public and corporate libraries and accepted a job offer with Morningstar.

CHANGES AT MORNINGSTAR

She has been with Morningstar almost seven years and has seen great changes in product lines and the number of employees. She has found it exciting to watch the company grow. She also found it exciting when her company went public a year ago.

This year, Morningstar acquired Ibbotson Associates, another investment research company. Although they did not have a librarian, they brought many library resources into the merger. Lorene looks forward to integrating its collection with Morningstarâ€™s.

Lorene joined SLA when she began work with Morningstar. As Professional Development advisor in the Chapter, she hosted an â€œInvesting for Retirementâ€ workshop earlier this year which was very successful. Her committee is planning a series of investment sessions next year. In past years, she was on the Vendor Committee. At the national level, Lorene has been involved with the Solo Librarians Division.

VALUE OF INTERNSHIPS

When not at work, Lorene enjoys attending sporting events, museums, and book signings. She is also rehabbing a recently purchased condo.

She has advice for library school students who would like to start a job as a special librarian. Even before graduation, get an internship in a library. When you graduate, you will have experience. The job market in Illinois is tight right now, so any experience you can get while in school will help with your job search.

Reach Lorene at lorene.kennard@morningstar.com.

Chapter Profile: Ken Des Jardins

Katrina Perez — Thu, 25 May 2006 17:41:25 -0400

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. He does mostly business related research to support the various practices at the firm. He also edits the Research Services departmentâ€™s quarterly newsletter.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is a full-service law firm representing global clients in complex corporate, restructuring, tax, litigation, dispute resolution and arbitration, and intellectual property and technology matters. The firm has over 1,100 attorneys at its offices in Washington, D.C., Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, and San Francisco.

All of Kirklandâ€™s offices have libraries, and Chicagoâ€™s has the most staff. The library serves attorneys and legal assistants in each of the firmâ€™s practices as well as the client development group and others.

Ken works with a staff of nine research specialists in the Chicago office, as well as specialists in Kirkland & Ellisâ€™s libraries in other offices. The research specialists have access to a growing set of electronic resources ranging from the very general to the highly specialized. Kirkland & Ellisâ€™s Chicago library also has a significant print collection consisting mostly of legal resources. The print collection has decreased in size considerably as electronic access to materials has become more widespread. The libraryâ€™s highly skilled interlibrary loan staff are experts at tracking down the hundreds of documents in all media that the attorneys request each month.

Ken gained his expertise through a variety of professional and academic experiences. He has an undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and an MS in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After attending library school, he worked as a business researcher in several settings. These include an accounting firm (Arthur Andersen), an Internet consulting firm (marchFIRST), and a business and science research outsourcing firm (Threshold Information). Before library school, Ken worked for several years as a technical writer, and he puts his writing skills to work wherever he can.

Ken says much of his expertise can be attributed to networking with â€œreally smart peopleâ€ including his managers, co-workers, and colleagues as well as the people he has served.

When asked for highlights of his career, Ken responds that some of his best memories are from his days working for an Internet consulting firm, despite his being set adrift when the firm went under. He found it exciting to work in such an entrepreneurial environment where he had the opportunity to define and market the service offerings of his department.

The most inspiring people he encountered as he advanced through his career are those â€œwhose dedication to customer service outweighed any preconceived notions of what a librarian is or should beâ€. These are the people who taught him the importance of establishing relationships with people throughout the organization. He stressed that they also demonstrated that â€œnot my jobâ€ is a phrase that successful professionals avoid using.

Currently Ken is a First Year Director of the SLA Illinois Chapter. His primary duty is to serve as a liaison between the Board and three of the chapter committees: Student Outreach, Public Relations, and International Relations. He works with these committees to ensure they have whatever they need from the Board. Also Ken keeps the Board up to date on committee plans and activities.

Ken is a former member of the Strategic Planning Committee and Programs Committee of the Chapter. When he served on the Strategic Planning Committee several years ago, he helped formulate the Chapterâ€™s mission statement and strategic plan.

Ken has been published in internal publications at each of his employers. At Threshold Information he wrote for Opportunity Knocks, a web-based newsletter for clients and potential clients.

When not at work, Ken enjoys traveling. He is looking forward to this yearâ€™s ski trip to Steamboat Resort, in Colorado. He also enjoys cooking, reading (most recently 1776 by David McCullough and Made in Detroit by Paul Clemons) and going to movies and theater.

Through his work experiences, Ken has developed some personal philosophies to pass on to beginning librarians who aspire to play a major role in a prestigious law library. At work keep your eyes and ears open and watch for opportunities to contribute beyond the day-to-day tasks as a research specialist. He says it can be tempting to settle into a comfortable, safe routine, but that wonâ€™t help a librarian to extend his or her influence beyond the doors of the library.

Clearly Kenâ€™s focus and drive have contributed to where he is now in his career.

Chapter Profile: Karen Trimberger

Katrina Perez — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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.

One aspect of her current position which she enjoys is serving on a global team which writes presentations on global marketing trends. The presentations are given globally to the heads of each account.

Currently Karen is the secretary of the Illinois Chapter of SLA. While serving as Secretary, she sits on the Executive Committee for the Chapter. Her responsibilities include overseeing several committees dealing with internal communication, including: the Informant, website, discussion list, and knowledge management. Prior to being elected Secretary, she served on the Program committee; there she was teamed with Maureen Malinowski to plan two meetings. This experience was a great way for her to gain exposure in the Chapter and learn about the inner workings.

When she is not at work, Karen serves on the Associate Board of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, she is a Master Gardener, and she mentors teen-age mothers who are wards of the state of Illinois. Karen enjoys hiking, being an Aunt, reading, and watching the Green Bay Packers.

The advice Karen would give to librarians who would like to work in a non-traditional position in marketing is to: "Constantly be aware of the marketing around you â€“ both traditional and non-traditional." "Break the mold." "Be passionate about your work." She advises that "Confidence in your work is critical to success."

Chapter Profile: Laura Barnes

Katrina Perez — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

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 libraryâ€™s website (including an environmental news web log). Also, she manages publications distribution, which has become less time consuming because all of the Centerâ€™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.

The Illinois Waste Management and Research Center is a state non-regulatory environmental agency. WMRC provides technical assistance to Illinois companies to help them solve their environmental problems. In addition, the Center funds research dealing with Illinois environmental issues.

Chemists on the staff provide analytical support to the pollution prevention technical assistance engineers and work on other environmental chemistry projects. One of their major interests right now is eco-toxicology. Theyâ€™re also doing analytical support for the WMRCâ€™s Pollution Prevention Programâ€™s bio-diesel program.

WMRC also has a relatively new environmental education program called Greening Schools. The focus of the program is to educate K-12 teachers and administrators about environmental issues and help them incorporate environmentally friendly practices into their curricula and their buildings.

The libraryâ€™s primary clients are WMRCâ€™s staff of engineers, chemists, and educators. Laura also runs a help desk librarian service for the Greening Schools project and the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable. Secondary clients include anyone who finds the web site and asks a question.

Her expertise with environmental information was gained completely on the job. She received her B.A. in History from The University of Illinois in 1989. While she was an undergraduate, she worked in the circulation department at the Champaign Public Library. Her experience at Champaign Public is what led her to library school, although she worked in a local bookstore for a year and a half before starting graduate school.

Laura was originally hired as the graduate assistant at the WMRC Library in 1991 (at that time, the agency was the Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center). Although she wanted to be a childrenâ€™s librarian, she was happy to accept the GA position until she graduated in 1993.

After that, Laura applied for available library jobs in Champaign-Urbana (there werenâ€™t too many;), while continuing to work as an hourly on a pollution prevention information grant that her manager had received about the time Laura finished her degree. She managed to find Laura funding until she left in late 1994. At that time, Laura applied for her supervisorâ€™s position, which had been rewritten to exclude departmental management responsibilities, and was hired in early 1995. She says that she was in the right place at the right time.

Laura has had several turning points during her career. The first came during a practicum at the Rantoul Public Library. That experience helped her realize that, although she loves childrenâ€™s books, she is not particularly creative when it comes to programming and itâ€™s not something she likes to do. At the same time, she also realized that she is good at digging for information and pointing people toward resources. Thatâ€™s something she wouldnâ€™t have had the time to do as a reference librarian in a busy public library. It is something that she does every day in her current job.

The second turning point in Lauraâ€™s career was being asked to speak at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference about environmental information on the Internet. As she hadnâ€™t yet had a lot of experience as an environmental librarian, this was a big confidence booster.

According to Laura, participating in Synergy was certainly another turning point in the best way possible. Synergy is the Illinois library communityâ€™s leadership initiative. Itâ€™s sponsored by the Illinois State Library and the Illinois Library Association. Her experience made her look at her career and life in completely different ways. She established a bond with other participants.

Laura found Sara Tompson, the librarian who hired her as graduate assistant in 1991 to have been particularly inspiring. Sara was extremely generous with her time and wisdom. She was an excellent mentor to Laura when Laura was a student and now a wonderful friend.

Laura also admires the tremendous energy and talent of people she has worked with on the SLA â€“ Illinois Chapterâ€™s Board. Veronda Pitchford and Jan Chinlund, are two board members with whom she has enjoyed working.

In addition, Laura appreciates the expertise of the members of the SLA Environment and Resources Management Division. Whenever she has been stumped by a reference question or unable to find an article, they have always come through for her.

Laura is the chair of the SLA IL Chapterâ€™s Government Relations Committee. Previously, she was the Member and Library News Editor for the Informant, and served on the Board of Directors.

At the national level, Laura is an active participant in the Environment and
Resources Management Division of SLA, particularly on the division e-mail list.
She was formerly the Membership Chair.

In addition to SLA, Laura serves on the Illinois Library Association Executive Board, the Lincoln Trail Libraries (LTLS) Board of Directors, and the University of Illinois at Champaignâ€™s Library School Alumni Association Board. She serves on the LTLS Strategic Planning Committee.

When not at work, Laura and her husband spend much time with their seven year old daughter, Tessa. Laura is active in the PTA, reads to her daughterâ€™s class once a week, and serves as a room parent. Laura and her husband enjoy chaperoning occasional field trips.

Laura is a co-mom (with Tessa) to an eight year old New Zealand White rabbit named Rosie. In her role as a bunny parent, Laura administers several Yahoo groups for the House Rabbit Society, a national rescue and education group focused on pet rabbits.

Laura is an avid reader with a wide range of interests. She is a fan of the television programs: West Wing, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and Boston Legal. She enjoys Dish Networkâ€™s DVR and the movies. Fortunately Tessa is as big a movie addict as her mother and is getting old enough to by interested in movies that arenâ€™t targeted at children.

The advice Laura would give to a beginning librarian who would like to work for the government, is advice she says she would give to any beginning librarian.1. Be prepared for politics to effect your job in one way or another. She says that she is fortunate to work in Champaign instead of Springfield so her library is somewhat distanced from daily political pressures. 2. Be able to sell yourself and your services to everyone in your organization. Marketing your value and the value of your library is critical to your survival as a professional. Make yourself the go-to person for information. 3. Get involved in professional organizations, particularly if you are in a one or two person library. SLA is a good choice but you should expand your horizons a little. Try getting involved with your local library system or the Illinois Library Association. You can learn a lot from public and school librarians. All librarians deal with many of the same issues. For instance, school librarian have many of the marketing pressures that special librarians do.

Laura encourages all librarians to attend the next Illinois Library Association Conference. She attended her first this year and was very favorably impressed. Stephen Abrams, Vice President of Innovation for Sirsi/Dynix (and SLA fellow) gave an inspiring keynote address. She also enjoyed sessions on change management and freedom of the press in the age of media consolidation. Next yearâ€™s ILA conference will be at Navy Pier.

Lauraâ€™s dedication to her career and family make her an exemplary librarian.