2001 SLA Scholarship Awards

Charlene Baldwin announced the SLA Scholarship Winners, 2000-2001, and Hope Tillman assisted with handing out the awards. Below are short bios about each award winner.

SLA Scholarship
Merrill Dawn Chertok	Merrill Dawn Chertok received her BA from Ithaca College in Corporate Communications and her JD from the Dickinson School of Law. She is currently employed by the Alexandria Law Library where as solo librarian she is in charge of the daily operations of the city's legal research facility. Previously she was the acquisitions specialist for the Dow, Lohnes, and Albertson Law Library and prior to that served jointly as the county law librarian and judicial law clerk for the Circuit Court for Allegheny County, Maryland. She also worked as a circulation assistant at the Ithaca College Library. As a student member of SLA she is active in both the legal division as the advertising manager of the Legal Division Quarterly, and in the Solo Division, as Chair of the Professional Development Committee. She is contributing a four part series to the Virginia Chapter Newsletter on the challenges of distance education. Ms. Chertok is enrolled in the Distance Education program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

David A. Hurley	David A. Hurley received his BA from Vassar College in Sociology and Psychology. He researched and wrote a thesis on culture change among the Navajo during his undergraduate education. He moved to a Navajo reservation after graduation and worked as a library technician at the Dine College Library located on the Navajo Nation in Tsaile, Arizona. His employment included multiple tasks, from developing a website and selecting online resources to outreach efforts such as training plus organizing a weekly video and discussion series. He also worked as a search strategist for Enthusiasm.com and as a library assistant for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle. Mr. Hurley is enrolled in the graduate program at the University of Washington Information School. He states: "it is within a special library that I believe that I can make the most meaningful contributions to the further development of not only the organization I serve, but the information based society in which we live."

Joseph Richard Purtell	Joseph Richard Purtell received his BA from California State University Fullerton in Business Administration. After graduation, he became an educational consultant and moved to the Ukraine. He stated that, while living abroad, "he was a gateway to American culture and information, always trying to put information in context for students." He returned to the United States and worked as a database coordinator and Internet researcher for PharmaPrint, a pharmaceutical corporation. He also worked as a client services supervisor for Interviewnow.com in Irvine, California utilizing customer relationship management software. Mr. Purtell is currently enrolled in library school at the University of California, Los Angeles. He comments: "there is intrinsic worth in searching a sea of resources for one crucial piece, finding it, and putting it to good use. It has replaced chaos with order, information with understanding, and most importantly, a question with a firm answer." He continues, "With Milosz, the poet, I find satisfaction in order, rhythm, and form. In fact, I can summarize by saying I need a good answer to a good question."

SLA Affirmative Action Scholarship Jennifer Ann Alcoset	Jennifer Ann Alcoset received her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in World Arts and Cultures. Her undergraduate work included the study of non-Western cultures from the perspective of music, dance, theater, ethnomusicology, folklore, art history and anthropology. After graduation, she was employed as an assistant to the Registrar, Special Collections with the Getty Research Library. From that position, Ms. Alcoset moved to a collections assistant for one year and most recently she has worked as a staff assistant for two years within Collection Development. All her positions have been within the Getty Research Library in Los Angeles, California. Ms. Alcoset is currently enrolled in library school at the University of California, Los Angeles. She comments, "in addition to my professional background, my personal skills and interests will also greatly contribute to special librarianship. I have discovered that as an artist, for example, my artistic abilities compliment my skills in handling and working with collection materials and have broadened my appreciation for working with different media. I have pursued my personal artistic interest in continued learning by taking extension courses such as Introduction to Decorative Arts and Handmade Book Structures."

Mary Adeline Connor Professional Development Scholarship Laura Jean Smart SLA Faculty Advisor David Cappoli (right) accepting for Laura Jean Smart	Laura Jean Smart is a special librarian at the University of California San Diego, serving as Instruction and Reference Librarian in the Science and Engineering Library. She has also worked at the San Diego Supercomputer Center in La Jolla, California, and as a Competitive Information Specialist for Northern Telecom while in library school. She received her Bachelor of Journalism with Honors from Carlton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and her Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada. She has been accepted to the Post-MLIS certificate program at UCLA, where she will be specializing in digital moving image archives. She writes, "Potential benefits of this project include: organization and preservation of media assets; increased usability of the collection; increased use of the collection as it is included into larger scale digital library efforts; and "best practices" which can be applied to other projects."