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Deadline for submitting articles for the Spring edition of the Bulletin is March 15, 2005. |
Greetings
from the Chair
Happy New Year!
It’s a tad incredible to realize that 2004 has zoomed its way into history and that a new year has already unfolded. I trust you all had wonderful holidays, have rested, and are ready to plunge into 2005 activities for DSOC. And there are many things happening in and involving our Division.
First, annual conference is just a few short months away. I’m really looking forward to Toronto as a site and for all the great programs Iris Anderson and Terry Hill are planning. We are continuing our One Dot Shopping series, this time looking at international statistics sources. We’ll be looking at some “Best Practices in Collection Development,” hearing from colleagues who have staffed “Libraries in War Zones,” and learning about “Geographic Information Systems--Data Sources for GIS” – a real growth area among researchers here at the Urban Institute and not just for G&M librarians anymore. The Mary Murphy Contributed Papers Session will feature a presentation on Geography Markup Language, and we will also have a session on Government Mapping. We are partnering with the Retired Members’ Caucus for a program that will explore “Are You Really Ready for Retirement?” -- a topic of interest to all of us, no matter how close we may be to our golden years. We’ll have our annual business meeting, our International Reception -- where we will present not only the International Special Librarian of the Year, but also the 2005 winner of the Division’s Murray Wortzel Award – and our annual open house co-sponsored with the Education and Museums Divisions. There are a few new things coming, too, so check out the upcoming preliminary program.
Second, you may recall that we voted at the 2004 annual meeting to undertake two new efforts this year. The first is to offer a scholarship to a Division member to attend a Continuing Education course at the 2005 annual conference. Thanks to the hard work of committee members Linda Richer, Elana Broch, and Deborah Carpenter, you will find elsewhere in this issue some information on the scholarship program and an application, should you wish to apply. The scholarship opportunity is open to anyone who has been a member of DSOC for at least one full year.
Our other new endeavor is to become involved in the SLA Twinning program. Ann Sweeney is spearheading our efforts in this area. We have identified and invited three information professionals in Africa to join with us. Under this program, the Division, as the sponsor pays 90% of the individual’s two-year membership in SLA. The “twins” then become members of our Division, their local chapter, and the International Information Exchange Caucus. The purposes of the Twinning Program are: to exchange information & experiences; to provide both parties with opportunities for professional growth and cooperation; to develop sustainable ongoing support for international librarianship; and to recruit more SLA members internationally. We are excited about the prospect of adding these new global members to our Division and look forward to working with them.
Since I have been identifying and thanking our many volunteers, allow me to recognize two more. Joe Hovish has been our Division archivist for the past several years. He has done yeoman’s work to keep all our important and official documents in an orderly fashion. He has now passed the torch – and the files – to our Past Chair Beth Hansen, who has transferred the files across town, literally, as they are both in Indianapolis. No, living and working in Indy was not a requirement for the job – it just facilitated the file transfer. Our thanks to Joe for his hard work and our most sincere thanks to Beth for agreeing to take on this responsibility. So, if you have documents that should be added to the Division’s archives, please contact Beth. If you’re planning to ship a quantity of materials, you should give her some warning; her email is hansenb@lei.org.
And finally, if your New Year’s Resolution for 2005 is to become more involved with your professional association, I’d love to hear from you. We’d be happy to have you participate more actively with one of our four sections, with our programs, or with one of our committees. You can reach me easily at nminter@ui.urban.org.
Until
next time –
Nancy
Thomson
Gale Murray Wortzel Award:
Call for Nominations
The Social Science Division will award the Thomson Gale Murray Wortzel Award for the third time at the Special Libraries Association’s annual conference in Toronto in June 2005. The Thomson Gale Murray Wortzel Award was established by the Social Science Division in cooperation with Thomson Gale to honor the memory of Murray Wortzel, a long-time member of the Division whose dedication and commitment to both the Division and the Association exemplify the consummate information professional. The winner is presented with a check for $1,000 and a citation. Roger Haley, librarian emeritus for the U.S. Senate, and Michael Kolakowski, librarian in the Government and Finance Division at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, were the first two recipients in 2001 and 2003 respectively.
Either
specific achievements and/or sustained excellence may be recognized. Nominees
should demonstrate achievements in one or more of the following areas:
• Notable service to the Division through distinguished continued service
or participation in a special project.
• Notable service to the Association or the information profession through
activities related to the member’s standing in the Social Science Division.
• Distinction in facilitating communication and cooperation among Division
members within the Association, or throughout the profession.
• Achievement in mentoring activities.
• History of contributions to the profession through research, publications,
or other activities displaying active participation in the advancement of
the information profession.
• Exceptional innovations at the worksite.
This
is an open invitation to recognize deserving members for this biennial award.
Any member of the Social Science Division or the Special Libraries Association
may make nominations. Nominations should take the form of a letter directed
to the chair of the Murray Wortzel Award Committee, which should include a
description of the nominee’s outstanding contribution(s), pertinent
biographical data on the nominee, and the nominator’s name, address,
telephone number, and email address. Optional documentation might include
supporting letters from persons knowledgeable about the nominee’s qualifications
for the award and/or examples of the nominee’s work. Members of the
Division Executive Board and members of the Award Committee are not eligible
to be nominated. The Award Committee will make a recommendation concerning
a recipient to the Division’s Executive Board who will make a final
decision.
Letters of nomination, either in hard copy or by email, should be sent to:
Susan Berg, Chair
Murray Wortzel Award Committee
The Library at The Mariners' Museum
100 Museum Drive
Newport News, VA 23606
sberg@mariner.org
Nominations must be received by April 1, 2005. Members of the Award Committee, in addition to the chair, are Laura Bender, University of Arizona, and Lyle Minter, Library of Congress.
Thomson
Gale is a long-time and generous sponsor of the Social Science Division
and the Association.
The Mysteries of IFLA Explained
IFLA – it’s one of those acronyms we hear all the time, bringing to the shivering mind such intriguing and exotic conference venues as Bangkok, Barcelona, or Buenos Aires and causing the rest of us twinges of envy, even though we may recognize the correspondingly higher cost to the pocketbook.
IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations, established in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1927 and headquartered in The Hague, no less. Its 1,700 members are spread over 150 countries, and its international ties and activities include formal associate relations with UNESCO and observer status with the United Nations and the World Trade Association, to name just a few. IFLA is the great global banner of our profession, endorsing free and equitable access to information throughout the world and promoting universal library service. We are in awe of its international purpose, extensive reach, and global camaraderie, but, for many of us, its actual structure has always seemed a bit murky.
So how, exactly, does IFLA function? Its mission is to “provide information specialists throughout the world with a forum for exchanging ideas and promoting international cooperation, research and development in all fields of library activity and information service.” Yet IFLA, like all associations, is what its members make it, which leads us directly to the question: who are the members, anyway?
According to the IFLA web site, there are several types of membership: “associations; institutions; institutional sub-units, one-person library centres and school libraries; and personal or student affiliates.” An elected Governing Board manages the organization, with an executive committee overseeing its direction and a professional committee supervising its activities, programs, and policies.
Associations and institutions, however, do not walk in and take a seat at a meeting; people do, and the ambiguous route from member bodies to the individuals at the conference was my point of confusion.
Although I’ve long known SLA members who were also involved in IFLA, I’ve never been exactly sure how that was accomplished, as must have been quite apparent to David McQuillan (and everyone else) at our Board Meeting last June as he attempted to explain the organization’s structure. In the exhibits later that day, I pigeonholed a friend of mine, Jerry Mansfield, to see if he could help. Jerry has been involved with IFLA for years, and he went over the same ground as David. Somewhat enlightened, due to having had the same information pounded into my brain more than once, I asked some of our DSOC members who are or have been in IFLA if they would further expound on the subject.
IFLA has eight divisions that are divided into 47 sections, each of which promotes a specific type or aspect of librarianship. Association members can register for four sections free of charge, institutional members for two, and individuals for one. All members except those in the individual category have voting rights. Currently, SLA is registered for 18 sections.
Each section elects individuals (nominated by section members such as SLA) to a standing committee which governs the activity of that section. The standing committees can have up to 20 members, each of whom can serve up to a maximum of two consecutive 4-year terms on that committee. They then have two years of ineligibility for that committee, but after that time has elapsed, they are once again eligible for nomination. For example, Dorothy McGarry, a DSOC member who has been attending IFLA conferences since 1985, served two terms on the Classification and Indexing standing committee in the 1990s. Following that, she was nominated and elected to two terms on the Cataloguing standing committee, but when those terms were completed she was once again elected to Classification and Indexing.
So to set up a hypothetical example, "Polly Plunkett" is an SLA member from Minnesota and is interested in library history. (She comes by this naturally, as her great-grandmother was a librarian in the early 20th century, taking care of books in a small lending library located between a pie shop and a barbershop on Fleet Street in London.) IFLA has a section on library history, so Polly expresses her interest to SLA. This is not currently a section to which SLA belongs, but they agree to join it and then nominate Polly as a standing committee member of that section. Polly is elected, and at the next conference finds herself working with colleagues from all over the globe to establish programs that promote the historical knowledge of libraries as a pipeline to understanding our cultural past (even though the library on Fleet Street, and its eventual demise, will forever remain a mystery to her.) And just as she and her cohorts may be planning a program on library usage and education in the 19th century for the next conference, so other standing committees may be planning programs on bibliography or reference work, and those with a geographic or subject basis may be tackling issues pertinent to libraries in Latin America or relative to such interests as science and technology. There are 47 sections, and the topics and subjects are endless. Interest groups can form under a section’s sponsorship and then spin off into their own section, if there is enough interest. Jean Porter, a DSOC member who served on IFLA’s Social Sciences Committee for two terms, saw two interest groups spin off from that section: Genealogy and Local History, and Knowledge Management.
IFLA’s core values reflect those of our entire profession: free access to information, the belief that this access should be universal, and the conviction that high quality library service is a necessary component of making this a reality. To foster these values, IFLA has six core activities that address the issues of library development, copyright, preservation, free access, and bibliographic and MARC standards.
This is only a brief sketch of the broad scope of this organization. If you’d like to know more about IFLA (and don’t have some friendly colleagues just back from Buenos Aires), go to the organization’s web site at www.ifla.org. It’s packed with information.
I’d like to thank David McQuillan, Pamela Tripp-Melby, Dorothy McGarry, Jean Porter, Jerry Mansfield, and SLA’s Stephanie Ann Russell for giving me a better understanding of this vital organization. I understand it’s possible to attend the conference as an observer, and one of these days I just might do that!
-- Beth Hansen
The Federal Web: Past, Present, and Future
Every year, I take an extended tour of the U.S. federal government’s web space so that I can update the annual reference book The United States Government Internet Manual (Bernan Press). My tour gives me an excellent overview of the current condition of federal web sites. Along the way, I also get a glimpse back into the past and some clues about the future. It reminds me a little of Scrooge’s visitors from Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come…but I’ll spare the reader and resist that analogy as best I can.
The
Past: Web Nostalgia
Like many U.S. government web sites, the Census Bureau’s site has reached
its tenth anniversary this year. The Bureau celebrates with a special set
of Web pages <http://www.census.gov/webdecade/>
carrying snapshots of past home pages, press releases from the early days
explaining just what the Internet is, and comparative statistics about then
and now. Pre-Internet, for the period of January-November 1993, the Bureau
received 16,803 inquiries for products via mail or fax. For the period January-November
2003, with their products and many users online, the Bureau got only 482 mailed
or faxed inquiries for products.
The
Present: Status Quo
This year, I tracked changes in federal web site URLs from the previous year’s
edition of the Government Internet Manual. Only 4% of the web sites had shut
down or had a change in URL from the previous year. Just about every federal
entity has a web site now and they seem to have settled at stable addresses.
(I did not track changes in the URLs of publications at federal web sites,
but these look to be as volatile as anything in the Wild West early days of
the web.) The content and style of federal web sites are now—in general—much
more professional, standardized, and consistently managed than they have been
over the past decade. We are a long way from having a homogenous federal web,
but it does seem to have reached a certain plateau of stability. Federal agencies
continue to put more resources online, of course, and the federal web is in
no danger of calcifying.
The
Future: Near and Far
Looking into the not-so-distant future, researchers can expect a steady stream
of new online resources from the federal government.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis <http://stlouisfed.org/>
plans to launch an economic and financial data archive in 2005. This resource
is to be called ALFRED, joining the Fed’s FRED II and FRASER databases.
(Did this all start with EDGAR and THOMAS?)
And speaking of THOMAS <http://thomas.loc.gov>,
the Library of Congress is launching a revised version for the 109th Congress.
The site will sport a new look and the capability of searching across congresses.
Over on the other side of Capitol Hill, GPO will be adding volumes of the
United States Statutes At Large to GPO Access <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/>
in 2005. Only laws passed in the 108th Congress (2003-2004) will be online
at the start, but GPO plans to keep the database current and to add older
Statutes At Large volumes as they are able.
For a look at the more distant future, check out the developing recommendations
and resources of the federal Interagency Committee on Government Information
<http://www.cio.gov/documents/icgi.html>.
The ICGI has working groups on the categorization of government information,
electronic records policy, web content management, and access to e-government.
ICGI was created in 2003 to implement sections of the E-Government Act of
2002 (Public Law 107-347). Its work today hints at a more cohesive, navigable,
and predictable federal web of the future. If your reaction to that is “bah,
humbug,” at least take a look at one resource already developed by an
ICGI working group: the Federal Web Content Managers Toolkit <http://www.firstgov.gov/webcontent/>.
This site has help for anyone managing web content today, including sample
style guides, policies, and usability resources found it the Library section.
Check it out while you are waiting for the federal web that is yet to come.
Peggy Garvin is author of the United States Government Internet Manual (Bernan Press). The 2004-2005 edition has just been released.
It's Twins!! Or is it Triplets?
SLA sponsors a project in which a librarian in a developing country is paired with a unit within SLA. The program was established to create a chance to exchange information and experiences among the parties; to provide opportunities for professional growth for both parties; to support international librarianship; and to recruit more international members to SLA. At the annual conference in Nashville, the DSOC Board voted to participate in SLA's Twinning program. We've been triply blessed: we identified three prospective twins, contacted them to ask them to join us, and were accepted by all three!
Our three new members are all West Africans: