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Who
was Karen J. Switt?
Commemoration remarks presented by Katherine Bertolucci at the LMD Business
Meeting and Luncheon, 2000 SLA Annual Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Mary
Lee asked me talk to you today about Karen Switt, a long time SLA member who
died last November, at age 47 and why I proposed that the LMD Leadership Award
be renamed after her. C. Berger Group has been a sponsor of the LMD Leadership
Award for many years and welcomes the opportunity to support the Division in its
goals by providing the cash award to the recipient. I think the best way to
profile Karen is to read you excerpts of an article written about her which
appeared in the SLA Illinois chapter’s newsletter, The Informant. It was written
by Janice Keeler, who couldn’t be here today.
The information profession was a major focus of Karen’s life. Karen met her
husband, David Grossman, who was also a librarian at the time, at a 1979 meeting
of the Chicago Online User Group (COLUG). During their extensive worldwide
travels together, Karen always took time to visit libraries wherever they went.
During her travels she sent her friends interesting accounts of their trips that
equaled those from published travel writers. Karen always knew the best
restaurants in any city you care to name. For several years, she organized
information dinners during the SLA Annual Conference for SLA friends from around
the country who had birthdays in June, even though her own birthday was in
September. She had a wide circle of family, friends, and professional
acquaintances, and was able to converse with people from all walks of life in
English, Hebrew, Yiddish, German or Spanish.
Karen worked as a beautician to earn money for college, and retained the ability
to cut hair, as she occasionally demonstrated for friends. Her undergraduate
degree was from Florida International University in Miami. She earned a master’s
degree in library and information science from Rosary College (now Dominican
University) in River Forest, Illinois. She also studied for a year in Israel.
She made major contributions both to librarianship and to the real estate
industry worldwide. From October, 1983 until 1997, Karen managed the library for
the National Association of Realtors in Chicago. She was instrumental in making
the NAR library the world’s largest library of real estate information. Among
her achievements at NAR, Karen automated library operations, expanded the staff
and collection, created an electronic catalog of holdings, managed libraries in
Chicago and Washington, D.C., and created index to real estate literature.
While Karen was at NAR, she was deeply involved in a project in Europe,
sponsored by the Eastern European Real Property Foundation, in conjunction with
the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). She helped set up libraries
and train staff to support the fledgling Real Estate Associations NAR and AID
were helping these countries to establish. Karen made many trips to Poland,
Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and East Germany, and was key to the
success of this endeavor.
Prior to joining the National Association of Realtors she was a reference
librarian at First National Bank of Chicago (now Bank One), Manager of
Information Services at Technomic Consultants, and Business Reference Librarian
at Florida International University in Miami. While in Florida, she taught
classes in the library school at FIU and was voted a favorite teacher. In 1997,
Karen moved to Washington, D.C. as manager of library and information services
at the National Academy of Sciences.
She fostered interest in the profession in her travels abroad, in the many
speeches and presentations she gave to Realtors all over the country, and within
her own staff. Both as a role model and by specific encouragement, she inspired
several of her staff to go to library school. I can name five former or current
NAR employees including my son, Joel, who pursued an MLS because Karen coached
them.
In SLA, Karen was a member of the Illinois and Washington, D.C. chapters and
three divisions (B&F, ITE & LMD), and a member of ITE Virtual Section. As a
member of the Illinois Chapter of SLA, Karen was chair of the Membership
Directory Committee, and involved in the initial planning of the Great Lakes
Regional Conference III, hosted by the Illinois Information Technology Division
of SLA and was responsible for organizing ITE – sponsored workshops to teach
online searching.
I personally knew Karen for 20 years. She was a friend, colleague, client. She
was admired for her management abilities by her peers. She was recognized by
them for her dedication to her profession as a mentor.
She was dedicated to our association, devoting many hours to LMD and ITE. Karen
was undaunted by challenges in all areas except her last one, succombing to
cancer. She was a leader in every sense of the word, and truly deserving of this
honor. It is a fitting tribune to her memory to rename the LMD Leadership Award
as the Karen J. Switt Leadership Award. Thank you.
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Leadership & Management Division
