Contents

• President's Corner
• Welcome New Members!
• Get Listed and Get Connected
• Warm-up the Keyboard!
• Getting Acquainted with The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• A Life Well Lived
• Community Outreach Fundraising Update
• South African Library Association
• Recovering from Genocide by Building Rwanda's First Public Library

President’s Corner: The Work of a Team Player
By Anne Caputo, DC/SLA President

Inspiration can come from many places. I recently sat, cooling my heels, in the outer office of a large Washington metropolitan church. Never mind why. As I waited by turn, I idly thumbed through an article by Scott Benhase in The Living Church in which he quotes a story from a 1992 issue of the Wall Street Journal by Thomas Kempner, emeritus professor of Henley College, titled "Basic Rules for Pleasing the Boss." Benhase notes that many articles are written on how to function as a leader but few describe how to be a good team player and how to function and thrive as a subordinate. The Kemper article does just that. While we may sometimes have leadership positions or serve in a management capacity, nearly all of us are also asked to be team players too. Nowhere is this truer than in the role of the special librarian, where we are often in teams with technical staff, business managers and many others who influence the way our working lives are run.

So with credit to Professor Kempner and Reverend Benhase, I offer up the 10 basic rules of being a good team player.

Rule 1 Don’t give your teammates any nasty surprises. Put everything on the table from the beginning of team formation.

Rule 2 If you see a problem or issue that you think is beyond your level of competency, don’t cover up. Let the team know your limits as well as your strengths

Rule 3 It is not helpful to demand immediate decisions from your team. If you cannot reach consensus table the issue until you meet again. Decisions made under pressure are rarely good ones.

Rule 4 Try to see your role in the context of the larger organization. Sometimes you may need to sacrifice a piece of your particular concern for the good of the whole.

Rule 5 Don’t communicate with each other solely by written communication. Good decisions come when you can operate in a 'real time' environment, either face to face or in virtual space.

Rule 6 When you present your ideas, don’t make them the only option, and don’t make other options so unattractive as to weight the scale in your direction only.

Rule 7 If your issue is complex, make sure your team has the details in advance and don't expect them to make a decision the first time they meet to discuss the issue (see Rule 3).

Rule 8 Speak up and make your views known, but if the decision is not entirely your preference, offer your full support. You would expect the same from others.

Inspired by: 'Teamwork,' by Rev. Scott Benhase, The Living Church, September 1, 2002, page 14.

One of the most memorable public-service campaigns in modern U.S. history featured Smokey the Bear who proclaimed: "Only you can prevent forest fires." In homage to Smokey, we would like to say to our DC/SLA colleagues: "Only you can ensure that your library or information center is listed in the forthcoming edition of the Washington Area Library Directory, by either you or your director completing the online questionnaire at http://www.arealibraries.com."

As the October Chapter Notes announced, DC/SLA, DCLA and LLSDC are producing the third edition of the Washington Area Library Directory (WALD). All of the data published in WALD is obtained directly from you and other information professionals employed in our metropolitan area’s libraries and in-formation centers. All library and center listings appear in WALD free of charge.

Since the WALD questionnaire "went live" in October, many DC/SLA members have submitted their electronic entries. Thank you! Still, we have not received entries for several libraries and information centers at which our DC/SLA members work. To reach our goal of producing a comprehensive, accurate directory that facilitates wide-ranging research, we need DC/ SLA members' full participation in our survey.

If you or a colleague received a letter from WALD's publisher, Data-Matic Systems Company, explaining how to complete the questionnaire, please submit your library's listing without delay. If no one at your organization has received the letter, please obtain your institution’s unique logon and password by sending an e-mail to the publisher at – help@arealibraries.com. You can also reach Data-Matic's customer service via the "help" link on the WALD website at http://www.arealibraries.com.

In addition to completing the questionnaire, while you are visiting the WALD website, please consider reserving a copy of WALD's third edition for your collection.

Thank you for your vital work to ensure that your library or information center is listed in WALD's third edition. And remember, by submitting your questionnaire, your library or information center will be in the company of other great Washington-area institutions. True, you won’t find Smokey the Bear listed in WALD. But you will find the library that belongs to Smokey’s sponsor – the U.S. Department of the Interior.

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A Life Well Lived
Submitted by Mary Ellen Bates, mbates@BatesInfo.com

Win Sewell, a long-time member of AIIP and SLA and one of the leaders in health sciences librarianship, passed away on October 23rd. Win worked for the University of Maryland and the National Institutes of Health and served as honorary president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.

She came to Washington in the early 1960s and worked at NIH's National Library of Medicine until 1970 and then at the University of Maryland until 1992. She also had done consulting work.

Dr. Sewell, a native of Newport, Washington, was an English graduate of Washington State University. She received a master's degree in library science from Columbia University and an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.

She had served on a 1958 International Federation of Pharmacy's pharmaceutical abstract commission, a 1965 National Academy of Sciences committee on modern methods of handling chemical information and a 1966 State Department library exchange program with the Soviet Union.

Survivors include two brothers and a sister.

There will be a celebration hosted by Win's sister of Win Sewell's life at her home at 6513 76th Place, Cabin John, MD on December 8th from 3-6 p.m. It's an open house; you can drop in any time from 3 until 6 p.m. Those of us who had the good fortune to have known Win feel lucky to have met such an extraordinary woman - someone who truly lived a full life.

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EDITOR’S NOTE:
Monday, December 16th is the deadline for materials which can be included in the January 2003 issue. The issue is distributed approximately three weeks after the deadline. The preferred submission format is a Word document sent via email.

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