Slany Chapternews Newsletter Summer 2004

ChapterNews Post Conference Issue. Volume 76, #3 Summer 2004

Letter from the Chapter President

IN THIS ISSUE Message from the President..........1

Happy New Year!!

Message from the

By Tom Pellizzi

Director of Publications .............3 Chapter Announcements:

No, I’m not kidding! For the Association, and our Chapter, the year begins in June, after the Annual Conference. The new Chapter Board is now in place, and we are already working to plan a successful year for you. The new Board includes: Thomas Pellizzi, President; Gwen Loeffler, President Elect; Agnes Mattis, Past President; Miguel Figueroa, Secretary; Susan Gormley, Treasurer; Catherine Ciaccio, Director of Professional Development; Bert Schachter, Director of Finance; Michael Gruenberg, Director of Publications

Dun & Bradstreet Award ............5 Southern Comfort in Stores .......5 The Conference from a Candidate’s Point of View.......7 Access to Information:

Gwen, Miguel, Catherine and Bert are new to the Chapter Board this year. Some Board positions are for one year only. Susan and Michael are in the nd 2 year of their two-year terms. Agnes, Gwen, and I are all in a longer cycle of 4 years (the Past-Past President serves on the Nominating Committee that finds new volunteers for board service).

How much is too much?............9 And The Award Goes To .............10 SLA Special Interview Rena Shannon .........................11

Board positions are not the only way to help the Chapter, of course. To a large extent, the Chapter depends on many other volunteers, some of whom commit only a day, or even half-day of their time per year. Our Annual Career Day, for example, couldn’t happen without additional volunteers helping the Career Day Chairperson. Our Holiday Party and our Chapter Programs couldn’t happen without additional volunteers helping the Arrangements Chairperson. There are so many ways for our members to become involved with Chapter activities, to network with peers, and to learn more about how the Chapter operates. I encourage you to get more involved. Whatever amount of time you have to offer, we can put to good use for the Chapter.

Exhibit in Nashville.......................13 Museums Arts and Humanities Division Hosts Pulitzer Author ..14 Touring the Vanderbilt Television News Archive ...........................15 Metadata at the SLA Annual Conference...........16

At the present time, the Chapter already has thirteen volunteers to fill Chair positions on the Chapter’s Advisory Council, and we are still looking to fill five more. Many of these Chairpersons could use additional help, which would involve lesser time commitments by other volunteers. Please contact me if you’d like to get involved with the Chapter. I can be reached most easily via email at: [email protected]

Professional Development...........17

ADVERTISERS Dialog.............................................6 Donna Conti Career Resources .....3

As a volunteer for the Chapter, I can only say that my experience has been fantastic, and I’m looking forward to serving as your President.

EBSCO...........................................7

On that note, the Chapter had the unusual luck of having Agnes Mattis serve two concurrent years as President. We all owe Agnes a debt of gratitude and I personally thank her for her leadership and mentoring over the years. I would also like to thank the other Board members of the Chapter, past and present.

EOS International...........................8 Gatta Design & Co. ......................15 Global Securities Information, Inc...4

I look forward to hearing from you! Enjoy a great summer!

InfoCurrent.....................................2 Pro Libra ......................................10

Thomas Pellizzi

Wontawk......................................12 ChapterNews

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Post Conference Issue. Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

ChapterNews New York Chapter Special Libraries Association Summer Vol. 76, No. 3

YOUR SOURCE FOR SKILLED INFORMATION NAVIGATORS • The premier source for high-caliber library & information management professionals

PUBLICATION SCHEDULE

• Executive search & direct hire placements nationwide

ChapterNews, the bulletin of the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, is published four times a year.

• Temporary & temp-to-hire assignments • Competitive candidate benefits & training programs

Deadlines for submitting materials:

Fall issue

September 24

Winter issue

December 15

Spring issue

March 15

A Part of TeleSec CORESTAFF

New York City Metro area: 212-642-4321

Summer issue May 14

[email protected] Washington, DC Metro area: 202-775-1890 [email protected]

Submit all material to:

Jennifer Kellerman ChapterNews Editor E-mail: [email protected]

www.infocurrent.com

Submissions: Articles on topics of general interest to information professionals and the New York Chapter are welcome. Authors can send submissions via e-mail as text file or MS Word for Windows attachments, or with article in the body of the e-mail. Please use single-line spacing, Courier font, with minimal use of boldface and italics. Include a byline with your full name and place of work.

SLA NY SNAP-SHOT

ADVERTISING inquiries should be addressed to:

Nancy Bowles 235 East 22nd Street, Apt 9L New York, NY 10010 Telephone: (212) 679-7088 or E-mail: [email protected] Agnes Mattis and Tom Pellizzi enjoy the 2004 SLA Annual Conference

Special Libraries Association assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by contributors to the Association’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official position of Special Libraries Association. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product by Special Libraries Association.

CHAPTERNEWS STAFF Director of Publications ChapterNews Editor Advertising Manager Webmaster Assistant Editor

Mike Gruenberg Jennifer Kellerman Nancy Bowles Shirley Loh Brenda Ling

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

Message from the Director of Publications:

The worth of a conference is not so much in the hotel amenities and scenery, but more so in the relevance of the programs presented. As a vendor, the worth of the conference is in the amount of traffic that flows to and from the booth and ultimately from the business derived from that traffic.

By Michael Gruenberg

The programs at the 2004 Conference were well attended, the exhibit hall had a steady flow of visitors and, although there were less people at this conference than in New York the previous year, all parties seemed satisfied with the results.

ashville has always represented to me country music, Vanderbilt University, country cooking and the Grand Ole Opry. I have been to the Opry, been to Vanderbilt, ate some excellent Southern style food and have a soft spot in my heart for Dolly Parton. So, it was with great expectations that I went to Nashville for this year’s annual meeting.

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Michael Gruenberg is the Strategic Accounts Manager at OneSource Information Services. He can be reached at [email protected] or 516.576.1575.

The site of the meeting was the Opryland Hotel, one of the largest and most successful hotels in the United States. The hotel has close to 3,000 rooms and they are usually booked to capacity. The hotel is a mainstay for weddings, meetings and conventions much like ours. The rooms are clean; the food is tolerable and not inexpensive. Perhaps the most striking element of the hotel is that it is comprised of a number of sections that are connected by walkways surrounded by lush gardens and waterfalls. All of this beauty is enclosed under glass. In other words, if you ever wondered what it was like to be the “pheasant under glass,” this place would give you an indication of what that is like. When I walked in and stared at the greenery, waterfalls and pools enclosed by a glass dome many stories above my head, I was immediately reminded of the Bruce Dern film that was released in 1972 called “Silent Running.” The central theme to this film was that, in times of adversity, mankind must have the ability to save itself. Dern is adrift in a spaceship appropriately named the “Valley Forge” which is part of a fleet of ships which contain a floating Garden of Eden. These sophisticated greenhouses containing lush greenery were designed to refurbish the earth with foliage in the event of nuclear holocaust. They are charged with circling the earth until such time as their plants are necessary for rebuilding the greenery that would be destroyed by war. When an order is given from earth to destroy these greenhouses, Dern must make the decision on whether to obey the directive or not. If the hotel could be lifted into space, it would have made a perfect set for this film.

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

CHAPTER ANNOUNCEMENTS CHAPTER ANNOUNCEMENTS New York Chapter member receives the Dun & Bradstreet Award for Outstanding Service to Minority Business Communities Nettie Seaberry, Director, Minority Business Information

Center for the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), New York, was the 2004 recipient of the Dun & Bradstreet Award for Outstanding Service to Minority Business Communities. The award is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet and presented by the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).

SLA Fundraising In June, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) launched a fundraising initiative to raise money for the transformation of the Professional Development Center. SLA hopes that the Professional Development Center will provide continuing education opportunities for information professionals and eventually make the association a valuable resource for continuing professional education.

The award, $2,000 and a citation, is given to a librarian or library that has created an innovative service for a minority business community, or has been recognized by that community as an outstanding service provider. Minority business is defined as Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, or people from the Indian Subcontinent, as classified by the U. S. Government for minority owned businesses.

For more information on the campaign or to make a donation, go to www.sla.org/give.

Southern Comfort in Bookstores Now! Sandra Kitt’s new novel, Southern Comfort, was released July 12, 2004. Sandra’s first novel, The Color of Love, was published in 1995. In 1999, she was nominated for the NAACP Image Award in Fiction. She’s also received a Waldenbooks Award, a Romantic Times’ Lifetime Achievement Award and has been nominated several times for Best Contemporary Novel of the Year from Romantic Times. In conjunction with the book, Sandra is sponsoring a Summer Contest.

“Nettie Seaberry is the director of the Minority Business Information Center for the organization, and the only librarian providing information for the organization’s nearly 400 national corporate members, as well as, its 39 regional affiliated councils across the United States,” stated Kay Stebbins, award committee chair for the Business Reference and Services (BRASS) Section of ALA. The Minority Business Information Center’s information systems database maintains over 15,000 minorityowned businesses and is accessible to the NMSDC’s 3,500 corporate members and regional affiliated councils.

For more information about the book, the contest and about Sandra, please go to her website – www.sandrakitt.com.

Writers Wanted!

Criteria for the BRASS Dun & Bradstreet Outstanding Service to Minority Business Communities Award are as follows:

We’re already preparing the Fall and Winter 2004 issues of ChapterNews and need volunteers to write for one or both issues. If you are interested in submitting something for publication in ChapterNews, please contact Jennifer Kellerman at [email protected].

• The recipient must be a business librarian or a library that has created an innovative service for a minority business community, or be recognized by that community as an outstanding service provider.

Submission guidelines can be found on the Chapter’s website: www.sla.org/chapter/cny.

• The award will be based on the library or librarian’s impact on the community. • The award recipient must be present at the ALA Conference to receive the award at the primary award ceremony. • The award recipient does not have to be a member of ALA, RUSA, or BRASS.

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The Conference from a Candidate’s Point of View By Agnes Mattis

fter the New York Conference and all the responsibilities that went along with that, I was looking forward to attending the Nashville Conference as a plain old member. No committee meetings; no extra demands on my time; no 7a.m. breakfasts. I was going to take CE courses, go to every program I wanted and see the exhibits.

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Then, I was asked to run for the position of Division Cabinet Chair Elect (quite a mouthful isn’t it?) in the Board of Directors and all my plans went out the window. The election is not until winter 2005 but, as a candidate, you are invited to a number of activities and programs. So, I arrived at Gaylord’s Opryland Hotel (aka Biosphere rd or Pod Land) on Thursday, June 3 and did not th escape…er, leave until Thursday, June 10 . I should have known I was in trouble when the first thing the hotel gives you is a color-coded map with the route to your pod highlighted. They strongly encouraged me to have a bellman escort me to my room so I would not get lost. Believe me, I was looking for breadcrumbs to leave a trail. But, soon I could find my way to the 4th floor in the correct quadrant of Delta pod with little trouble.

Cindy Hill kept the meeting moving along. There were no lightening rod issues, like a name change or a dues increase. We have a new chapter, Australia-New Zealand, and a new division, Competitive Intelligence. Friday evening, incoming-President Tom Pellizzi and I had dinner at Volare, the Italian restaurant in the Biosphere. It was located in the Garden Conservatory pod (think terrarium).

I was invited to the Board’s half-day strategy session on Thursday afternoon. There were exercises in Strategic Planning and the association’s mission and vision were discussed at length. There was a “Dutch treat” dinner that evening at Cascades, the seafood restaurant in the hotel. Now, those of you who did not go to the conference may ask: Why would you eat in a hotel restaurant? Surely, there are better places to eat. Well, you don’t know Pod Land. It is twenty miles from downtown Nashville, where there may have been good restaurants, but once you get sucked up into the Biosphere, it’s virtually impossible to escape.

On Saturday, the Board was in session for a half-day and I took a half-day CE course. And, then came the biggest disappointment of the week: Smarty Jones lost the race at Belmont and did not become a Triple Crown winner! After another dinner in the hotel, it was off to the Division suites to mingle, meet and greet. Candidates are encouraged to get to as many Open Houses and other networking events as possible. Over the course of the conference, I stopped in at Legal, LMD, News and, of course, my “home” division, Business and Finance. At Saturday’s B&F event, I ran into Brent Mai, the current Division Cabinet Chair, who was responsible for planning the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) for Sunday morning. He asked if I would do him a simple favor during the morning’s opening remarks. He was going to be reading a story to the audience and, in four parts, he needed me to scream. That’s right - just let out a scream for the entire audience to hear. Well, Brent and I go way back so I told him I would do it since he assured me it

Friday brought a full-day Board Meeting. I must confess to being a geek and a long time Board-watcher. But as a Board-watcher, I could sit in the audience and tune in and out as I wanted. As a candidate, you sit at a special table in the front of the room so you really have to pay attention and not fidget around. You can’t make faces, roll your eyes and carry on; you have to be on your good behavior. It was nice to meet or get reacquainted with the other candidates who will be on the ballot this year. Whoever is elected, I think your association will be in good hands. The board had a full agenda and President ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

(Continued from page 7)

would be well before the candidates were being introduced to the leadership. A candidates’ breakfast was arranged for Sunday morning at 7:30 (there went my promise of no early breakfast times). The breakfast was another chance to get to know the other candidates a little better and for incoming President-elect Pam Rollo to give us information on what we could expect over the next few months. After breakfast, we were to march over to the room where the LDI was being held and line up to be introduced after the current Board. How could I be this anonymous screamer if I was lined up for the world to see? I warned my fellow candidates that I would be letting out four screams so they wouldn’t think I had lost control of my senses. It was a little embarrassing but these are the things we do for friends. AAAAAHHHHHH! Sunday was also a very busy day. After the LDI, I had to do a presentation for the Legal Division, attend the Fellows meeting, go to the Fellows reception for first time attendees, escort a few first timers through the exhibit hall and get ready for that evening’s Awards ceremony. The awards ceremony was held at the Parthenon, in front of this huge gilded statue of Athena. I kept thinking that if this enormous statue falls forward, it would wipe out the leadership of SLA. I was honored to be named a Fellow of the Association and look forward to contributing in any way I can. The bus trip to and from the Parthenon was the only time since Thursday I left the biosphere. The conference began in earnest on Monday morning and ran through Wednesday afternoon with keynote speakers, Division programming, Association programming and the exhibits. It was such a whirlwind that I still can’t separate what I did each day. The next candidate activity was a brown bag lunch on Monday. I had to miss the Legal Division Lunch and Business Meeting so I did not get a chance to catch up with my Legal buddies. The candidates’ lunch was a last minute idea so it was not well publicized. There were more candidates than participants. I hope it continues in coming years so members get a chance to meet the candidates in an informal setting, ask questions and hear the views of future officers. The final activity of the conference was attending the first Board meeting of the 2004-2005 Board. It was Wednesday afternoon and was scheduled for just late enough in the afternoon that I could not catch the last plane back to Newark. So, a few of my pod mates made a big escape to the outlet mall a short walk away and had dinner at The Aquarium. It was our chance to watch other living things in a controlled environment. Then it was back to Delta pod to pack and prepare for re-immersion into civilization.

SLA NY SNAP-SHOT

Mike Gruenberg and Agnes Mattis at SLA’s 2004 Annual Conference

Agnes K. Mattis is head of the Corporate Library at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLC. She can be reached at [email protected]. ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

Access to Information: How much is too much? By Jennifer Kellerman

Law, public policy, safety and common sense will all contribute in the decision-making process and the level of comfort regarding accessibility to information will change constantly.

he 2004 SLA Annual Conference kicked off with a thought-provoking speech by Dr. Carl Ledbetter who spoke about making information accessible on the Internet while still protecting privacy and providing security.

You do not have to be an expert in technology to understand the importance of security. Providing protection against spam, viruses, worms, trojan horses and adware and spyware is a big business. Dr. Ledbetter says the problem is so pervasive that almost 70% of all email is spam. These invasions can be merely annoying or can pose a serious threat to one’s privacy and/or security. For example, many viruses allow others to gain access to confidential information.

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It is important for all users to consider the value of having information available via the internet and the value of having some information be private and inaccessible to the masses. According to Dr. Ledbetter, the public will decide upon the accessibility of information. Through public policy, law, safety concerns and ultimately, common sense, a consensus will be achieved as to what information is available. Then, that consensus will change. Dr. Ledbetter believes that the line between the restriction of information and access to it will constantly change. It is the responsibility of users to stay informed, consider their own thresholds of tolerance where information access is concerned and take part in the ever-changing dialogue.

Dr. Ledbetter is an Information Technology partner at UV Partners, a private equity investment group based in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. He is a technologist as well as a teacher, mathematician and an avid mountain climber. Dr. Ledbetter speaks frequently on the issues surrounding information technology (IT) and the global economy. Technology and the internet in particular have made vast amounts of information available to the public. But, is the information accessible? Information is accessible when it is easy to find. It must be obvious where to find it. And, information must be true to be useful. Dr. Ledbetter noted that there is an inherent conflict between making information accessible - something that information professionals work hard to do - and preserving privacy and security. The issue of how to manage and control information and access to it becomes more prevalent as data becomes increasingly available on the internet and security issues, such as identity theft, become a problem. We must ask ourselves what access should be restricted and how we should restrict it.

Jennifer Kellerman is a Corporate Reference Librarian at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. She is also editor of ChapterNews. She can be reached at [email protected].

Dr. Ledbetter outlined several “fundamental security principles” regarding the accessibility of information. The first is that security and accessibility are not antithetical but are antagonistic. We can make information accessible, and we can restrict it. The key is deciding what information is to be accessible and what information should be restricted. Another fundamental security principle is the need to understand what we want and what risks we are willing to take when it comes to making information accessible and/or restricting access to information. Most of us are willing to have our phone numbers published in phone books but are we willing to have our email addresses distributed? Our social security numbers?

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Vol. 76, #2 Summer 2004

And The Award Goes To... By Sandra Kitt

he Sunday evening program could arguably have been billed as the Special Libraries Association’s version of the Oscar presentations. It is the annual evening of recognition on the national level of our peers and colleagues for demonstrating professional excellence and innovation in information science and service to the association. For many years, during the SLA convention, the banquet dinner and awards presentation was the culminating event of the week (after several days of presentations, CE courses, and treks through a cavernous exhibition hall where we over-dosed on chocolates). In more recent years, the event has been scaled back to a glamorous reception held on a summer’s evening before the conference actually begins.

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Recently, at the 2004 Annual Convention in Nashville, the awards ceremony took place at the Parthenon in Centennial Park in downtown Nashville. The Nashville Parthenon, the third incarnation of a structure built for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition, is a full scale one-to-one replica of the original Greek Parthenon. It is a small but imposing building with the look of serious and staid purpose, with its Corinthian columns and marble floors. While the Parthenon also serves as a museum site th th for a group of sixty-three paintings by 19 and 20 century American artists, it can appear cold and official. Inside there is a seventeen-foot high statue of Athena, decked out in dazzling gold, that towers over all activity in the center hall. An audience maybe be seated, literally, at her feet. She is either a symbol of wisdom and justice, or of pagan rituals. Nonetheless, on the night of the SLA President’s Reception, the Parthenon was alight with a glow of celebration.

award recipient was greeted with applause, hugs and good wishes, the flash of cameras. Awards were clutched and accepted with heartfelt thank-you speeches. The evening activities were heightened for this reporter by the knowledge that three New York Chapter members were being honored: Susan DiMatteo, a former SLA President who admitted to having passed “a difficult year,” was especially pleased by her award; Agnes Mattis, a four-time New York Chapter President, kept her acceptance brief for fear of “...incurring the wrath of Athena!”; Ellen Miller, a two-time Chapter President, was inducted into the SLA Hall of Fame. Ellen perhaps spoke for all the winners by expressing gratitude that her career, and participation in SLA, had connected her to colleagues who were also good friends. Congratulations to all the recipients. The New York Chapter is lucky to have so many dedicated members.

Appropriate to the evening, many attendees came dressed to be seen, in tuxedos or sequins. I adore any opportunity to ‘dress up’ and strut in high heels, as befitting a special evening with special and accomplished colleagues. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks were served prior to the presentations.

Sandra Kitt is the former Collections Specialist in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History. Currently a full-time novelist, she was also New York Chapter President from 1999-2000. She can be reached at [email protected].

As it turns out those chosen for recognition, in such categories as the John Cotton Dana Award, President’s Award, Diversity Award, as well as the induction of Fellows, had already been notified of their selection. The anticipation was already over. The flight of butterflies in the stomach had landed. But the joy was fully experienced and shared before an audience of more than a hundred attendees. Cindy Hill, SLA President, officiated. Each ChapterNews

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Solving the Jigsaw

It is interesting to note that the Gaylord Opryland conference office tries to get in touch with properties where a group has had meetings in the past to find out what the group did and did not like so that the Gaylord Opryland can improve on that particular service.

An interview with Rena Shannon, Convention Services Manager of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center

The biggest conference group the hotel has hosted was the Distributor Education Club of America (DECA) which has 14,000 people. The overflow went to the Radisson and to other downtown hotels. Another large conference was the National Rifle Association with 12,000 attendees. The company uses a sales force that is regularly on the road promoting the advantages of using the Gaylord facility conference center.

By Gloria Dinerman The interview with Rena was recorded. Most of the following article is paraphrased due to the length of the interview. Questions were provided to Rena prior to our meeting and no sensitive issues such as money matters, political guests, or internal policies were discussed.

The most serious problem Rena has dealt with during her ten-year service at the hotel was a tornado a few years ago. Even though there was a back-up generator that functioned for the emergency exits, everyone had to get into the exhibit hall and away from the glass, in spite of the fact that the glass in place can withstand 150 miles per hour winds.

he Grand Ole Opry complex has 3500 employees and 2881 rooms. The length of an average stay is three nights/four days. The largest part of the staff is engaged in housekeeping and banquet services. Only about thirty workers take care of the vast gardens – including planting, cutting, special seasonal arrangements, fertilizing, and bouquets for the VIP’s. The company does most of its staff recruiting from Jamaica. There is a large group of hotel personnel who have a visa and come for nine months out of the year, every year.

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Question: How do you deal with temperamental stars? Reply:

Question: You had to have had some of the Country

stars here. Reply:

“No, not really. We handle more of their catering events so it’s the Catering Manager who deals with it.”

Question: (not wanting to let go of this topic) But they

stay here?

The hardest part of working with conventions is not getting enough information in a timely manner – as if some customers expect the convention services manager to be a mind reader – and an accurate one. “So, you know, it’s hard to be persistent and try to get the information and also not be perceived as being rude and pushy,” says Shannon.

Reply:

“Not a lot of them. A lot of them have homes here. It may not be their main home but they have second homes in Nashville.”

Question: Do you ask for feedback from the people,

for example, who arranged our convention? Reply:

Working with SLA was no different from working with other groups except that an extra bathroom was converted to all female use due to the lopsided gender attendance. A computer program does most of the room assignments, including sleeping rooms on a first come/first served basis. Some of the conventions are booked ten to fifteen years in advance. The occasional conferences that book at the last minute tend to be those for when a company has a new product to launch. The main general complaint of conference-goers is not being able to find one’s way around the enormous facility.

ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

“Well, I never had to deal with any stars.”

“Oh yes. They have a meeting with the Director of Catering or the Director of Conventions. They go over the hits and misses and things they think should be improved and things that went very well. And, there are specific [employees] that did a great job. Getting feedback is a daily process throughout the convention. E-mails are sent out three months before the convention and again a month before the convention so they know in advance if there are any questions or any concerns that need to be addressed.” (Continues on page 12)

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(Continued from page 11)

Rena came to Nashville via Berlin, where she was in the travel business. Her husband, whom she met while he was stationed in Germany, came from Tennessee and they settled here. I asked if her greatest assets were patience and psychological insight. She modestly said that her co-workers compliment her on her attention to detail, organization and communication skills. Trying to get all the information to all the departments involved so that everybody knows what’s going on and who is going to be there is a huge challenge but it is vital. “You know, if there is anything special about a person or a group or event so that there are no surprises. That’s a very important part of the business.” (Author’s note: Sounds like knowledge management). About two weeks before a conference is scheduled to start, a resume of the association is sent to all departments at the hotel, providing as many details about the group as possible. Then, all of the departments coordinate their specific duties. There is also discussion between department heads about points and concerns that might have been missed. I asked Rena where she goes on vacation and the answer was that she goes back to Germany. When her parents come to the United States, they like to go to Las Vegas. Would she enjoy running or owning a little Bed and Breakfast some day? The answer was a definite no - not busy enough. When a conference is in residence she works 12-15 hours per day and Rena enjoys that pace. The hotel is planning certain improvements, such as adding a spa and high-speed internet access connections for all of the rooms. Question: What bit of advice would you give anyone

wanting to enter the field of convention services? Reply:

Patience. You have to have patience. You need to know that it’s not an 8:00a.m. to 5:00 p.m. job. When you have groups in, you run around a lot. Definitely not a job where you sit behind a desk. You have to be open-minded and aware that it can be very stressful, very busy, and very demanding. But I think that also makes it a fun job. (Author’s note: sounds like a clone of our librarian jobs.)

Gloria Dinerman is President and founder of The Library Co-op, Inc., a 22- year old corporation providing staffing, project management and consulting for the information profession. She received a BA in writing and psychology from Brown and her MLS from Rutgers. She has been writing professionally for many years and most recently has a contributing chapter on managing an information business in the latest encyclopedia published by Marcel Dekker. ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

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Exhibit in Nashville: The World Comes to SLA

that the exhibitors make to the success of the conference. At the SLA annual conference, networking receptions or networking breaks were scheduled all three days that the exhibits were open.

By Chuck Lowry

There were several different categories of vendor. Most noticeable were the largest data aggregators, names that all of us think of every day: LexisNexis, Thomson, Factiva, Dialog. These prominent members of the information community had their usual large and well-staffed exhibits. Some lower-key, but interesting, data aggregators and advanced search aides were also on the scene, including New York’s Alacra (full disclosure: American Lawyer Media Research is a customer) and Find/SVP.

lthough the SLA Board of Directors met in Nashville on Friday, June 4 and the first sessions of the conference took place as early as 8:00a.m. on Saturday, June 5, for the exhibitors, the public sphere of the conference did not begin until Sunday at 11:00a.m. when the exhibit area formally opened.

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Most conference attendees would be surprised to see the level of activity in the exhibit hall for the two days before the exhibits open - days when the exhibit hall is generally not opened to non-exhibitors. In effect, a large, hangar-like building is transformed over thirty-six hours into a carpeted, organized grid of commercial opportunity. Part of the effort comes from the conference contractor, in this case Freeman Companies, one of the largest of the national exhibit/conference/trade show contractors. Freeman provides much of the furniture, including tables, chairs, carpets, literature racks and counters. The exhibitors who contract with Freeman are billed on a per diem basis for the furniture and fixtures they require. The “vendors to the vendors” are official suppliers who are generally designated by the host organization to minimize confusion and chaos in the set-up period. These include electrical contractors, telephone line installers and computer rental firms. The final pieces of the puzzle are put into place by the exhibitors themselves. Those pieces range from specially constructed exhibits the size of small villages, with inlaid computer screens and custom carpets, to smaller exhibitors with simple signs and small tables.

The banking/securities/finance/insurance industry was well represented. Exhibitors from this group included Dun & Bradstreet, A.M. Best, Global Securities Information, Economist Intelligence Unit, Edgar Online, Standard & Poor’s, Reuters Business Insights and various Thomson Financial units. It seems that one of the fastest-growing SLA segments is comprised of law firm librarians. It is no surprise to see BNA, CCH, Lexis, West, Kluwer Law/Aspen, American Lawyer Media (your unworthy servant) and PLI, among others, represented at the conference. Science publishers, as usual, were richly represented, through the aggregators such as Elsevier or Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, the society publishers such as American Institute of Physics, IEE, ASCEs, and through the for-profit scientific publishers, including, among others, Springer and Thomson Scientific. A final category especially worthy of mention includes the library service organizations. Exhibits, often with impressive demonstrations (and, let us confess, impressive promotional items), were mounted by, among others, Swets, EBSCO, Rittenhouse, Taylor and Francis and others.

The SLA program listed 221 registered vendors. Interestingly, there were 1,240 persons registered to work at the 221 exhibits. Some obviously were solo or two-person operations, while others were fully staffed by literally dozens of reps, working in shifts. To give an example of how important the SLA market is and the seriousness with which vendors treat it, there were three exhibitor reps at the conference for every four member attendees!

An exhibit that drew large crowds throughout the three days was that of The British Library. The Library’s document delivery system was demonstrated with electronic representations of some of its priceless holdings, including the Sherburne Missal, whose pages were augmented with audible Gregorian chant.

As is usual at annual conferences of this type, the exhibits were open for several hours over a couple of days. In this case, the schedule permitted attendee access from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. on Sunday, 8:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M. on Monday and 10:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M. on Tuesday, after which the mad rush of disassembly began. As is also customary now at conferences, certain events were scheduled in the exhibit area to encourage the conference attendees to see the exhibits and to engage the exhibitor personnel. This is recognition by the host group of the important contributions, both financial and substantive, ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

The exhibitors with whom I spoke were very satisfied both with the level of attendance and with the seriousness of the attendees who came by the exhibits. But, then this was a conference for librarians, and nothing less could be imagined! Chuck Lowry is the Director of Client Relations for LegalMarketInfo, the research group of American Lawyer Media. His office is in New York, where he can be reached at 212.592.4932 or [email protected].

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Museums Ar ts and Humanities Division Hosts Pulitzer Author at SLA Nashville Convention

Like many artists, then and now, Audubon was a terrible businessman. Throughout his life he would struggle to provide for his wife, Lucy, and two sons (a daughter died at age three). Audubon even returned for a five year period to Europe in an attempt to package and sell his ornithological studies in a portfolio that would famously become known as “Birds of America.” In this Audubon did succeed, building a reputation and gaining a following of loyal collectors. Missing his family, however, he decided to leave once again for America. When he returned to his wife and sons, he found a lot changed in the bountiful land that provided the grist for his work. Audubon had this to say about the expansion of America:

By Sandra Kitt

gratifyingly large number of attendees of the 2004 Annual SLA Convention in Nashville turned out th on June 7 to hear Pulitzer Prize winning author, Richard Rhodes, talk about and read from his soon-to-be released book, Audubon: The Making of an American. I arrived a few minutes late expecting that the audience would just be settling down to lunch when, in fact, Mr. Rhodes had already begun his presentation. I picked up the narration in time to learn that John James Audubon was born in the French colony of Santo Domingo, today known as Haiti, and that he was the illegitimate son of a French sea Captain and his French Chambermaid. Audubon was eventually adopted by his father and stepmother, and raised in Nantes, France (on the Loire River).

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“I feel with regret there are no records nor satisfactory accounts of the state of the country when we first settled it.” He needn’t have worried, since his prodigious output of watercolors and drawings, his journals and letters, have survived to give all of us an idea. Mr. Rhodes proved an effective storyteller, vividly bringing to life Audubon’s experiences. He closed by making a confession to the audience about researching his project which was, in its own way, a compliment: “I didn’t make this story up. I found it in your libraries.” Sandra Kitt is the former Collections Specialist in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History. Currently a full-time novelist, she was also New York Chapter President from 1999-2000. She can be reached at [email protected].

While scandal and an inauspicious beginning make for great drama to a person’s life story, it is Audubon’s journey to America at the age of eighteen to start a life for himself that really captures attention. Rhodes confessed that he is not the first writer to tackle Audubon’s life, but he appears to be the first to understand what motivated Audubon both as a man and an artist. Highly sensitive about his origins, Audubon spent his life trying to conceal the facts and overcome the social and financial handicaps of his birth. He was very handsome and vain, very sociable, and also very talented. And he was a man who longed to be truly free...perhaps from society’s conventions and the limited possibilities he was born into, with no chance of being his father’s heir. Demonstrating an early interest in rendering, he spent a great deal of time in the woods, studying and drawing wildlife. We know Audubon primarily for his incredibly detailed studies of birds (birds are free to fly away...), but he was also interested in the more scientific aspects of the species such as anatomy and migration patterns. He even went so far as to describe how each bird tasted once he’d finished using them as models and converted them into food for his family.

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

Touring the Vanderbilt Television News Archive

INFORMATION ORGANIZATION NEEDS GOOD DESIGN TOO.

By Rita Ormsby

uring a tour of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, SLA members saw a room full of monitors, each showing historical news broadcasts. Earlier this year, the News Archive, the world’s most extensive archive of television news, received a two-year $281,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to transfer more than 40,000 hours of material from three-quarter inch U-matic videotape to MPEG-S digital video. This conversion was underway during the tour.

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Since its founding on August 5, 1968, by the late Nashville insurance executive and Vanderbilt graduate Paul C. Simpson, the non-profit archives has recorded every ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news broadcast as viewed in Nashville. An hour of daily news from CNN is available starting from 1989 and Fox News coverage was recently added to the archive. Also available are more than 9,000 hours of special news-related programming, such as the political conventions since 1968, presidential speeches and news conferences, the Watergate hearings and the recent wares in the Persian Gulf War and Iraq. Comprehensive coverage of ABC’s Nightline is available from September 12, 1988. Archive staff members create summaries of each broadcast segment. It was also noted that the commercials shown during the broadcasts are also archived. The archive’s director is John R. Lynch and Skip Pfeiffer is the editor.

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Who uses the archive? Journalism students, professors, and other researchers do. Sometimes, the networks request footage from the archives that is lacking in their own collections. Since the archive does not hold the copyright to the works, currently loans for duplicated tapes or specific compilations can be made. Details, including a searchable database and the fee structure, are available at http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu. I was interested in visiting the Vanderbilt Television News Archive because I often refer students to it. I came away from the tour impressed with the amount of work that is being done by a dedicated, small staff and a small budget. At the conference’s closing general session, Bill Ivey spoke about the need to preserve America’s past. This tour demonstrates how new technology is helping preserve the past of broadcast news. Rita Ormsby is an assistant professor and information services librarian at The William and Anita Newman Library of Baruch College. Contact her at [email protected]. ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

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Vol. 76, #3 Summer 2004

Metadata at the SLA Annual Conference

Content Management Standards; Technical Standards Update was presented by Marjorie Hlava from Access Innovations, Inc. and Amy Warner from Lexonomy, Inc.

By Juliane Schneider

This session was an update on the NISO standard Z39.19, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri, and a brief discussion about RDF and OWL, W3C semantic web standards and how all of these pieces fit together. There was also a brief update on other NISO standards that are being revised or released in 2003-2004.

here were many wonderful presentations about metadata and its impact on libraries, from the basic (Developing a Metadata Strategy) to the complex (The Semantic Web: Modeling the New Web with Librarian Input).

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There were other sessions that I was not able to attend, including Happiness is…Taxonomies, a panel discussion about building and/or buying taxonomies, and Data Visualization: Imaging Information that covered techniques of visualizing data in order to identify patterns, enabling better analysis.

Grace Agnew’s (Rutgers University) Developing a Metadata

Strategy was an excellent review of what metadata is, what it does, and who uses it. What was especially useful was the way the presentation showed how Rutgers implements metadata, and what issues and choices were involved in the process. The presentation was a very practical “how-to” guide on getting started on your metadata project. The PowerPoint presentation is available at http://www.sla.org/content/Events/confpresentations/ 04confpresent.cfm

I also attended the Cataloging Committee meeting, which is still focused on traditional MARC record and AACR2 cataloging. Metadata was briefly discussed, and a concern was put forward about students in Library Science cataloging programs feeling overwhelmed by all that is going on in the metadata arena. The emphasis on this committee is upon traditional cataloging.

Two presentations made up The Semantic Web: Modeling the New Web with Librarian Input. JR Gardner, Sun Microsystems, and Dav Robertson, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences offered possible future solutions to the problem of searching and using data on the World Wide Web. With all of the different ontologies, schemas and formats out there, how do we harness the information and data? Who determines the classification of objects? JR Gardner presented the advantages of a search engine called NOVA that can “be trained on any ontology to yield custom classification of any data form.”

Juliane Schneider is a Bibliographic Database Librarian at the Ehrman Medical Library, New York University School of Medicine. She is involved in many projects, including transitioning our serial holdings to MARC21 format, building a database and metadata schema for digital photographs, creating a metadata schema for electronic curriculum materials intended to be shared on a cross-institutional basis, and doing original cataloging for the really strange things that occasionally cross my desk. Juliane can be reached at 212.263.8935 or [email protected].

Dav Robertson talked about the Metadata Generation Research Project at NIEHS and UNC. The focus of this project is the generation of metadata, and its accuracy, by metadata professionals, authors of the data, and automatic metadata generators (Klarity and DC.dot). Some of the research conclusions were that automatic tools are useful, and can be used first, but human skill should be applied for metadata creation requiring intellectual discretion, and that authors can create acceptable metadata. Also, a majority of the authors in the study support collaborative metadata generation, and prefer personal and email communication for such collaborative efforts. Both of these presentations can also be found at the link above.

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I have worked as a librarian in library settings since shortly after completing my MA in library studies in 1979 so my thoughts on alternative careers do not reflect a history of working outside the box.

Professional Development:

Changing of the Guard and Alternative Careers for Librarians

However, at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), I have noticed that four of six holders of MLS degrees (or equivalent), who are known to me, work outside of the formal library setting. A former medical librarian is manager of fundraising research. A former corporate librarian is the webmaster. A former corporate archivist and special collections librarian is a project manager in the government affairs office. A former children’s librarian is an exhibits writer. In another example, an MLS-holder, a long-departed government affairs manager at WCS, who had started as a science librarian in Ohio, is now vice president for public affairs of a science museum in Minnesota. In short, these former librarians represent a partial microcosm of the world of alternative careers for librarians.

By Steve Johnson

n June, Catherine Ciaccio became Director of Professional Development for the New York Chapter of SLA. She is now in charge of planning professional development programs for the New York Chapter. You can reach her at [email protected]. Although I am now the chapter’s former Director of Professional Development, I remain interested in professional development topics, such as alternative careers for librarians.

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In 2004, despite the improvement in the U.S. economy, and some new hiring of librarians in the corporate world, the downsizing and closing of libraries continues. Information professionals now work in an environment in which information industry vendors increasingly sell to information technology departments, rather than librarians and libraries. In the non-profit world, low endowment earnings have resulted in layoffs and closings. Many SLA members have practical reasons for looking for careers outside library walls.

Competitive intelligence is one oft-mentioned alternative career not represented among the former librarians working at WCS, where public relations professionals perform the CI function.

This year, SLA has responded to interest in non-traditional careers with a virtual seminar. SLA’s virtual seminar on alternative careers for librarians, originally slated for th th April 7 , has been rescheduled for Wednesday July 14 . The speaker is Linda Braun, principal of Librarians and Educators Online. The New York SLA chapter will offer the seminar at the usual time and place:

Steven Johnson is manager of the Bronx Zoo Library, Wildlife Conservation Society, where he has worked since 1979. He has been a member of the New York Chapter of SLA since 1988. Since 2003 he has been convener of SLA’s Natural History Caucus He can be reached at [email protected] or 718.220.6719.

DATE:

July 14th

TIME:

2:00 PM.

Nonetheless, I am impressed by the number of alternative careers for librarians which may be observed at WCS. From my perspective, alternative careers for librarians are not a far off national trend. The trend has reached my neighborhood.

WHERE: Science, Industry and Business Library New York Public Library 188 Madison Avenue, Conference Room 018 (Located on the lower level of the library)

If you plan to participate in this session, please drop me a note at [email protected]. Pre-registration helps make sure that the right number of photocopied takeaways are available on seminar day. I send reminders and directions to all who pre-register for the virtual seminar sessions. ChapterNews Post Conference Issue

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