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January 2004 Volume 63, No. 5 |
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Dear Colleagues, Welcome to 2004. It always surprises me to make it through the threshold of each New Year. It was fun celebrating the holidays with YOU and our colleagues from DCLA and DC ASIST at the Arts Club – Barbara Folensbee-Moore and Sheryl Rosenthal did a super job putting another festive evening for the 120 or so of us who attended. Past presidents Sue O’Neill Johnson and Betty Landsman entertained us with a classical duet on piano and flute and then Second Vice President Kristina Lively chimed in with some jolly holiday songs. By now most of you have ordered and received your new Washington Information Directory 3rd edition, which describes all our libraries, listing the important phone numbers and collections that we share. It is available from www.arealibraries.com. Thanks go especially to co-editors Eileen Deegan (DC/SLA), Amy Pass (LLSDC), and Mike Kolakowski (DCLA) for bringing this project to closure! Toward the close of the year, I had the opportunity to speak to two audiences. On December 11, I spoke to 150 military librarians who were holding their 40th international conference. I chose the topic "Working the White Spaces (places on the organization chart that no one is responsible for) – Redefining Our Roles in Organizations." It was great to see SLA President Cynthia Hill who had flown in from California to support this very important group of SLA. I also had the opportunity to give the commencement address to the CLIS winter graduation class on December 21 at the University of Maryland. I spoke about the role of librarians as leaders and the importance of risk-taking. Giving talks is a risk-taking business for me, but the value is that it makes me take the time to reflect on and articulate guiding principles. 2004 is going to be a good year. Nominations Chair Sue O’Neill Johnson and her committee are already gathering names of those willing to participate in the leadership of our chapter as Vice President, Second Vice President, Treasurer, and Director. If you are interested in running for one of these positions or would like to get more involved, please email her at sueojohnson@msn.com. Meanwhile our current Vice President Sheryl Rosenthal will be promoting some interesting programs for our dance cards. For instance: January 20: Database Creation and Design With some of you I will be participating in the Leadership Development meeting in Albuquerque January 21-24. For those of you who won’t be there, I will report on the implications and decisions of that meeting in my next column. Until then – I wish you well. Susan |
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A Day at the DC Summit On November 15, I and a few other DC/SLA members participated in Citizen's Summit III, a day long "town hall" for DC residents to help shape the District's annual spending priorities and legislative initiatives. Not knowing what to expect I soon found that "town hall" was a loose description of the process. When I arrived at the new Convention Center I received a folder with the number 185 on it and was directed to table 185 in the main hall -- a lively scene of bands, coffee, donuts and booths touting the services of various DC agencies and nonprofits. Since I was attending to support the restoration of funds to carry out capital improvement plans for DC branch libraries, I was pleased to see that the Public Library had a great display. There were approximately 200 round tables in the hall with 8-12 participants at each table. Eventually folks settled down at their tables and got to know their tablemates. My group included 2 senior citizens worried about the rising cost of their drugs, a high school senior in need of money for college, an Assistant US Attorney, a Ward 5 resident tired of the abandoned cars on her block, a GW professor concerned about the homeless, and a newsletter editor outraged that 1 in 3 DC residents lives below the poverty level. When the summit finally started, we discovered that we would be discussing program options for each of five major themes: Providing Quality Education; Expanding Opportunities for Residents (Jobs/Housing/Healthcare) and Making Neighborhoods Safer. Each theme had 3-5 program options that were discussed at each table in the following manner: First each participant gave his/her thoughts on the option and rated them, secondly each table reached a consensus of the priority of each option, and finally the table voted electronically on the options. At the end of the day, the results were tallied and presented to the whole Summit, and most participants left thinking in a different way about the challenges the District and their fellow citizens face. How does one speak up for DC school and public libraries when there are no "open mike" opportunities, and when restoring the funding of the Public Library is not one of the options under the major themes?
As this goes to press, the DC Community Outreach Coordinator is finalizing
plans for bringing the Summit results to the individual wards. You will still
have an opportunity to be heard on the issue of importance of public library
funding in the District of Columbia at the ward level. The details should be
posted on the Neighborhood Action web site so keep an eye out for meetings in
your ward:
http:// The District now expects to get a windfall of $190 million and the DC Council and Mayor will be debating what to do with the extra money. This is the perfect time to write the Council and ask them to increase the DC Public Library's budget to 1% of the overall city budget.
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Special Libraries Association assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to SLA's publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official views of SLA. Acceptance of advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product by SLA.
Subscriptions: Advertising: EDITOR’S NOTE: Materials for Chapter Notes should be sent to the Editor: Cynthia Holt Event announcements should also be submitted electronically to the: Listserv Moderator: DC/SLA Internet Committee: Send address changes for Chapter Notes to: SLA Headquarters |
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Just a day in the life of a web researcher -- this time I was asked to find local coverage of a recent case of product tampering. I started out with the usual suspects, including a search of the large news sources, such as news.google.com, news.altavista.com, and news.yahoo.com. Newsisfree.com is another good choice, although the search function only looks for the words in the headline. However, it includes some news-related blogs as well as the more traditional news sources -- a useful feature when looking for consumer-oriented news such as a product tampering case. My next approach was to go directly to the newspapers in the town where the incident occurred. There are a number of directories of newspapers, organized by location. I usually start with the directory of newspaper directories maintained by the Open Directory Project, which you can get to at directory.google.com/Top/News/Newspapers/Directories/ or dmoz.org/News/Newspapers/Directories/ In this project, I also made a point to look for weekly business journals, on the assumption that they would cover this type of news closely. You can find your city's business journal through www.bizjournals.com or newslink.org/biznews.html. I could also have consulted Gary Price's NewsCenter (www.freepint.com/gary/newscenter.htm) for an almost overwhelming collection of links to news resources such as wire services, government agencies, and selected newspapers' web site. Then, I remembered Radio-Locator (www.radio-locator.com). I first started using this site when I found that my radio couldn't pick up the local classical music station. Instead, I now use Radio-Locator to identify other classical stations that offer a streaming media version of their broadcast. My current favorite is KING-FM, although I'm still getting used to hearing the Seattle weather forecasts and wondering why they are predicting a light drizzle when it's freezing cold and snowing outside my window in Colorado. In any event, Radio-Locator is a handy source for locating the web sites for radio stations within a city or state, as well as searching by format (farm(!), jazz, public radio, etc.). Radio-Locator, formerly the MIT List of Radio Stations on the Internet, includes listings of stations in over 100 countries, including a blues station in Antarctica and Radio Nepal. So, continuing my research on local coverage of that product tampering case, I looked up the radio stations in the state I was interested in, and clicked through to each of the news, business, talk and public radio stations in the area. I found both current coverage of the event and a couple of stations that provided an archive of their news stories going back several weeks. Bingo! After that, I headed over to PublicRadioFan.com, a directory of -- yes -- public radio stations around the world. As with Radio-Locator, you can search by location, click through to the station's web site, and then browse any available archives. One of the advantages of public radio stations is that, while they cover fewer stories than commercial news radio, the stories are often five or ten minutes long. They usually interview academicians, industry observers, or government experts, whom I can then contact for a follow-up conversation. After this, of course, I ran a search in a couple of the fee-based online services (Factiva, Dialog, LexisNexis) to make sure I had covered all the electronic sources I could. All told, I gathered a good collection of the news coverage of this case, most from sources my client would not have thought to check. If you want to read more about finding radio stations on the web, check out the article in the April 17, 2003 issue of Free Pint, a great fortnightly newsletter for info pros and researchers. www.freepint.com/
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Member Profile: Member Profile: What Keeps Mary Running? Mary Feldman is 83 years young, and her phone continues to ring with opportunities for cataloging, both volunteer and pay. She feels guilty about marking her SLA membership form "retired"! Although a bit hard of hearing now, she is otherwise robust, uses the Metro, and can take short walks to destinations in her trademark Takoma Park-style sandals. You will see her at a great many of DC/SLA and DCLA gatherings. She has had a long and productive career, and has maintained a successful freelance career since 1983. She credits the legendary late Dr. Elizabeth Stone, her best friend, for the inspiration and quality of her career. So much of her work, her opportunities and her support came from Dr. Stone, who emphatically encouraged her to go after opportunities, and to belong to organizations. Their friendship lasted almost fifty years until Dr. Stone’s death in March, 2002. Mary is divorced, and raised four children in Takoma Park, where she still lives. Today she is the grandmother of five and the great grandmother of six. All of her children have worked in libraries and book stores; one, Jo, is the librarian at the Exploratorium, a children’s museum in San Francisco. Her son, Steve, lives in this area, and Mary frequently visits her other children in San Francisco, Victoria British Columbia, and Nova Scotia. Catholic University Career Highlights
Recent Freelance Work
Association Highlights
Why does Mary actively participate in DC/SLA and DCLA? She attends programs and receptions to learn and because she likes the people. She is especially interested in programs about anything to do with cataloging and metadata. If there were more programs in Maryland or nearby Virginia, she would attend more. Get in touch with Mary at mkfeldman@starpower.net |
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