Slany Chapternews Newsletter Winter 2006

The New York Chapter

ChapterNews Volume 77, #4 Winter 2006

A Message from the President

IN THIS ISSUE

By Gwen Loeffler

A Message from the President: .....1 The New Orleans Public Library ....3 Baltimore 2006

ach New Year, I’m glad to have an excuse to reflect on the endeavors and challenges I’ve experienced over the past 12 months, and I begin to plan for bigger & better things in the coming year. I try not to refer to these new plans as resolutions — that seems like too much of a commitment. Instead, I prefer to view these plans as real opportunities for growth & change.

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— Where Tradition and Transformation Converge ..........6 Midtown Executive Club & Chemist Club News................7

When it comes to the New York Chapter, our accomplishments have been numerous this year – if I do say so myself. Having learned so much last year from our Past President, Tom Pellizzi – among others – I felt capable of facing the challenges this year would bring. When my term as President began back in June 2005, the Board & Advisory Council came together for our annual transition meeting. Outgoing members shared their experience & advice, and incoming members brought a lot new energy & ideas. I was confident that I was surrounded by a group of people who would bring enthusiasm to their work – and they have!

Netscape Notices The Librarians — and is Worried! ....................10 SLA Student Chapter Forms at Pratt ..........................11 The Realization of a Life Lived Well:

We put one of these new ideas into motion right away with our first Midtown Happy Hour in July. This event proved to be more popular than we anticipated with more than 70 members packing into The Ginger Man. In October, we hosted a second Happy Hour, and in February, our Winter Happy Hour was held at The Midtown Executive Club/The Chemists’ Club.

Rosemary Demarest ................12 Chapter Announcements.............13

In September, SLA Executive Director, Janice Lachance, came to New York to encourage members to participate in the Association’s first eVote on proposed changes to the Bylaws. The amendment passed by a wide margin. For more information on that vote, visit http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/press-

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Every seat was taken when business etiquette expert Peter Post spoke to members in November. This outstanding speaker engaged the audience and offered advice on handling difficult, real-life situations. Kevin Manion, President-Elect of the Chapter, did an excellent job coordinating all aspects of the program, including the book signing event that followed Post’s presentation.

EBSCO...........................................6 EOS International.........................11 Factiva ...........................................8

The Chapter’s Director of Professional Development, Catherine Ciaccio, and Professional Development Chair, Marlene Augustin-Lambert, have continued to bring us SLA’s Virtual Seminars, and initiated a new series this fall. Jim Hoon, Director of Information Services at Sudler & Hennessey, presented a live, lunchtime discussion on surviving & thriving in a healthcare/medical library.

Global Securities Information, Inc...9 Heller Information Services............4 InfoCurrent.....................................3

Members had another opportunity to mingle when Downtown Networking Chair, Maggie Smith, hosted a successful luncheon on November 9th, at Battery Gardens.

Prenax............................................3 Pro Libra ........................................7

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Wontawk......................................10 ChapterNews

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ChapterNews New York Chapter Special Libraries Association Winter Vol. 77, No. 4

We celebrated early this year with our Annual Holiday Party on November 29th at Au Bar. Two hundred members gathered at this festive venue to revel with friends & colleagues, enjoy abundant food & drink and dance the night away. You can check out photos from the party at http://www.sla.org/chapter/cny/partyscenes.pdf

PUBLICATION SCHEDULE

Special thanks go out to all of our new sponsors who joined with us to bring you programs and events since June 2005: Dialog, Elsevier, Factiva, LexisNexis, 10KWizard and WSJ.com.

ChapterNews, the bulletin of the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, is published four times a year. Visit our web site: www.sla-ny.org

The Chapter’s Program Planning Chairs, Tesse Santoro and Peggy Decker, are finalizing the details of an exciting group of programs coming up in the Winter and Spring. They will kick off the new year with a panel discussion on change in the information industry. Other events in the planning stages include programs on branding your information center and what’s new in technology. Watch our web site at www.sla-ny.org and our discussion list for information on all of our upcoming programs and events.

Deadlines for submitting materials:

Winter issue: December 15 Spring issue: March 15 Summer issue: May 14 Submit all material to:

Charles Lowry ChapterNews Editor E-mail: [email protected]

Wishing you all the best for 2006, Gwen

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.

Gwen Loeffler is Senior Research Specialist at the global advertising and marketing network Young & Rubicam Brands. She can be reached at [email protected] or 212-210-3986.

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]

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Gatta Design & Company, Inc. For inquiries call (212) 229-0071 or www.gattago.com 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 Communications ChapterNews Editor Advertising Manager Webmaster ChapterNews

The dance floor came alive at this year's Holiday Party.

Mary Muenkel Charles Lowry Nancy Bowles Michael Rivas 2

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The New Orleans Public Library Here beginneth the Lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet. See how the city doth sit desolate. She that was full of people is now made like unto a widow.

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efore the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Public Library operated from twelve branches through the efforts of two hundred sixteen employees. The physical effects of the hurricane rendered seven of the buildings so damaged that their reopening cannot be considered at this time. The economic effects of the hurricane resulted in the laying off of one hundred ninety-seven of the library’s staff, leaving nineteen recalled employees.

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On October 31, with wrecked and brick-filled cars still blocking the sidewalk at Camp Street and Canal Street, with the Industrial Canal littered with barges torn open or tossed onto the banks, with as many as eighty or ninety percent—no one can say for sure—of the city’s former residents still away, with schools and churches, whether great universities like Loyola and Tulane or small neighborhood storefronts, facing a future as uncertain as that of the great city they helped to form and sustain, under these circumstances, the library system’s nineteen remaining employees managed to re-open three branches. The main library, the South Carrollton branch and the Algiers Point branch offered limited services and limited hours.

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Two other branches, St. Charles Avenue and the Children’s Resource Center, could have physically been reopened, but it is impossible to run a library of five branches with fewer than twenty employees.

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Your correspondent was able to offer some volunteer labor in the main library, near the Central Business District and only two blocks from City Hall, during the week of October 31, the first week the library was open after the storm and the flooding. I spent time generally on some housekeeping items that had gone undone in the days before the storm as the staff prepared the library as much as possible for city-wide devastation that, under the circumstances, no one could have imagined. It was revelatory of the instinctive generosity of the library staff that, as the library re-opened, these individuals spent no time discussing their personal losses or inconveniences. After all, there were mothers with children needing to

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see Green Eggs and Ham, and curious teenagers wondering about previous hurricanes in New Orleans, and dozens and dozens of unconnected souls needing to check e-mail, communicate with insurance companies and government agencies, shop for new refrigerators and tend to the chores of daily life, now a thousand times more complicated than two months earlier.

The length of my love affair with New Orleans has not dimmed its ardor. I don’t know if anything I did was of lasting help, or if anything that you can do will be of lasting help, but fidelity in adversity is itself a virtue, and sometimes that has to be enough. Surely we all believe that great cities are made greater by great libraries. Let us, as we are able, help this great city and this great library.

Current activities, as might be expected, involve damage assessment of buildings and materials, consultation with various levels of government about prospects for aid and reopening, and fund-raising. Most of us are not fortunate enough to have a week’s vacation available to go to New Orleans and spend some money to help out the local economy. And even if that were the case, the beneficial effect for the library would be indirect and a long time coming.

The author, a member of the SLA-NY chapter who wishes to remain anonymous, spent the week of October 31 in New Orleans, a city to which s/he is particularly and faithfully devoted.

A more direct option for helping the New Orleans Public Library is offered by the Louisiana State Library, which has opened a fund to help libraries disrupted by the Gulf storms. The New Orleans Public Library temporary web site (http://www.nutrias.org) links to this fund. By going to this site, we can both chart the progress of the library’s comeback and contribute materially to that comeback.

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Baltimore 2006 — Where Tradition and Transformation Converge By Staff Correspondent

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he SLA will hold its annual meeting from June 11-14, 2006, at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland.

The program committee is preparing three days of timely, pertinent panels and speakers on the whole gamut of library staffing, management and operation issues, while not neglecting traditional librarianship skills and duties. Each year the exhibit hall seems to be more crowded and to offer more interesting products and services. Perhaps most obviously of all, this year’s keynote speakers will be known to just about all SLA members. Gwen Ifill is a PBS mainstay both as Moderator and Man-

aging Editor of Washington Week, and as senior correspondent on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She is a native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston. She came to PBS after serving as a senior political correspondent at NBC, where she frequently appeared on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, on Meet the Press and on MSNBC. Less well known is her career as a print journalist with the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Herald American and Baltimore Sun.

Wednesday will see more concurrent sessions, though with no exhibits, which conclude Tuesday afternoon. Walt Mossberg addresses the closing general session at 11:00 A.M. Wednesday, while the afternoon is given over to caucus business meetings.

Walt Mossberg is the author of the Personal Technology

column, which has appeared in the Wall Street Journal every Thursday since 1991. Constantly on lists of the “most influential” writers about technology and computers, Mossberg received the 1999 Loeb award for Commentary. He regularly appears on CNBC and on PBS. A native of Warwick, Rhode Island, he graduated from Brandeis University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a reported or editor at the Wall Street Journal since 1970.

This barebones summary of the conference does not do it justice. I encourage you to begin your planning by looking at the annual meeting web site (http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2006/index.cfm) to take care of the practical things (registration, housing, travel) and to begin to “program” your own personal voyage through the conference. But here is an additional thought: Baltimore is a very convenient train ride from New York. Do you have younger staffers who might profit from a day or so at SLA? You know that you go to see old friends and make new friends, thereby increasing your perspective on the profession, to see new products and services in the exhibit hall, and to learn from the excellent programming. Would not some of your junior staffers profit from these same practical benefits, as well as experience and foster a renewed commitment to a profession that needs them? Let’s put Baltimore into a “New York state of mind” for a few days in June!

In Baltimore, the pre-conference activities kick off on Saturday, June 10, with continuing education classes and the SLA tour of Baltimore—while your friends the vendors are in the exhibit hall wondering where the scissors are, why they brought so much print material (and where they’ll put it) and where the signs for the exhibit could have got to. On Sunday the exhibit area opens, the continuing education program is resumed and Gwen Ifill opens the general session. The day—as all the subsequent days—will be completed by a plethora of social activities. Monday and Tuesday are again exhibit days, plus full days of programs. The SLA will host its annual Awards Reception at the U.S.S. Constellation on Tuesday night. ChapterNews

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The Realization of Midtown Executive Club & Chemists’ Club News By Sarah Warner

here is a lot going on at the Midtown Executive Club & Chemists’ Club in the heart of midtown at 40 West 45th Street, and we do not want you to miss out!! Membership privileges include a charming dining room, monthly wine dinners, a grand club room and bar, hotel accommodations, reciprocal cub arrangements, and catering and room facilities for business meetings or special events. The Club is a great place to meet a colleague or have a business meeting.

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Among the benefits of the Executive Club is a membership number to permit the making of direct reservations at the chain of Club Quarters Hotels, domestically and internationally. These hotels are clean and comfortable, designed for business travelers, with complimentary coffee, in-room high speed internet connections and club rooms with additional computer facilities. The great glory of these hotels is the real estate mantra, location, location, location. To give a few examples, besides the obvious centrality of the New York club, members will find the DC hotel on Seventeenth Street NW, two hotels in Chicago near the Loop, a hotel in Boston within walking distance of South Station and two hotels in London, one a quarter mile east of St. Paul’s (near Lloyd’s and the financial institutions of the City) and one a quarter mile west of St. Paul’s, near Fleet Street, the large law firms, publishing houses and cultural institutions. The Club Quarters Hotels are a membership organization, and your SLA/Midtown Executive Club connection will make you a member eligible to make direct reservations at these convenient hotels.

SLA-NY SNAP-SHOT

It is so easy for SLA New York Chapter Members to sign-up: Send your business card with your address, telephone number and email address along with a check for $30.00 for a year’s membership. Make the check out to “SLA New York Chapter” and send to Sarah Warner at Wontawk, 25 West 43d Street, Suite 812, NY, NY 10036. Rita Ormsby, Chair of the Global Outreach Committee, raised $300 for libraries in need around the world and raffled off more than 12 prizes, including our Grand Prize, Dinner for 2 at 21 Club.

Questions: Contact Sarah Warner at [email protected], or by telephone at (212) 869-3348.

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Netscape Notices The Librarians — and is Worried!

between available supply of qualified candidates and (i) the quantity and quality of library school programs, locally and nationally; (ii) the time and resources library managers are able to devote to training and mentoring new librarians, (iii) the prevailing salary levels compared to the salary levels of professions requiring similar education and preparation, (iv) the status of librarians within the various corporations and organizations whose information services they manage and provide, (v) the qualifications required of librarians in particular situations (e.g. MLS and JD both for law librarians at a certain level), (vi) increased management duties (diversity, hostile work environment issues, increasingly expensive benefits, etc.) that library managers, along with managers in departments throughout corporations and organizations, are required to undertake, or (vii) an evolving view of the library as it becomes involved in archiving, knowledge management, general training and other ancillary (or are they?) activities.

here is a great deal of hand-wringing over the future of certain jobs, sometime related to economic considerations, sometimes related to the future of a beloved profession, sometimes related to personal anxiety. Surely librarianship and the information sciences are no exception.

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It is natural, therefore, that one is interested in public (i.e., non-library-professional) notices about prospects for the profession. In that context, I saw a note the other day on the Netscape introductory page about the five jobs which faced imminent shortages, and therefore may be said to offer opportunity. Amongst the nurses and machinists were librarians. The site’s reasoning was simple: “Studies have shown that librarians are expected to exit the profession en masse in coming years.” This conclusion is based on conclusions from the U.S. Census Bureau (more than one-quarter of all librarians will reach the age of sixty-five by 2009) and from a study published in Library Journal (40% of library directors will retire by 2009). In addition, Netscape notes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites a waning of interest among young persons in the library profession. There was a discussion at a recent meeting of the New York chapter’s Advisory Board about, anecdotally, the difficulty of filling professional librarian positions at many levels. Although this is not the place to initiate the discussion, and your correspondent does not have the requisite expertise to guide the discussion, maybe it is time to enter into a dialogue that will better inform all of us about certain relationships, including the relationship

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of the Newsweek Research Center and Advisory Board member for internships of SLA-NY, came to Pratt to speak on the subject of internships. We look forward to additional speaking programs in the spring, including planned presentations by Carrie Bickner on the preservation of materials “born digital,” by Pam Rollo on the SLA itself, and by Jeffrey Zeldman on designing with web standards. Also planned is a series of database and product demos by vendors and database administrators, as well as some training workshops.

SLA Student Chapter Forms at Pratt By Lisa Ryan, Chapter President

“Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today?”

This active program of social, professional and instructive programs, we hope, will give us the momentum to become a permanent, vital part of SLA-NY, and may, we hope, encourage other student groups to form and become active in the area. We thank you for your encouragement and support and invite you to follow our activities through our web site, http://pratt.edu/~sla.

n at least one spectacular case, there is nothing wrong with kids today. Library students at Pratt Institute have formed a student chapter of approximately forty members. All forty are either full or student members of the SLA.

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Lisa Ryan is the President of the Pratt SLA Chapter and can be reached via e-mail through the chapter web site, http://pratt.edu/~sla.

Formed in and active since a September 20, 2005 kickoff meeting, the group has a full slate of officers and advisors for the 2005-2006 academic year: Lisa Ryan, President; Elizabeth Sucher-Jacobson, Vice-President; James Adler, Treasurer; Tiffany Schureman, Secretary; Jennifer Brown, Director of Social Networking; Molly Eger, Marketing Manager; Virginia Papandrea and Pam Rollo, Faculty Advisors, and Heather Edwards, Pratt SILS Alumni Liaison. Vice-President Sucher-Jacobson is committed to spearheading membership throughout the academic year, including a major push during the Spring 2006 registration period. In addition, executive meetings and membership meetings are contemplated throughout the academic year. An item to be discussed will be a project for the Spring 2006 term. Since professional preparation is the focus of our chapter, one of our major activities has been the organization of library tours in the New York area. Several were planned for 2005 and early 2006, including ABC News Research Center, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Museum of Natural History, Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Society, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The New York Botanical Garden, The New York Horticultural Society, The New York Yacht Club and The University Club. SLA members associated with these distinguished libraries have been generous with their time, often staying late or coming in on weekends to facilitate these experiences for the Pratt SLA members. The chapter also had two programs with speakers during the fall term. Paul Schlotthauer, Reference Librarian and Archivist at the Pratt Institute spoke at a session cosponsored with the School of Information and Library Science Student association on the archived materials available at Pratt itself. Dana Gordon, Deputy Director ChapterNews

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The Realization of a Life Lived Well: Rosemary Demarest

Rosemary was a very active member of the SLA, both nationally and within the New York chapter. She was President of the New York Chapter in 1955 and 1956, and from 1968 through 1971 she served on the SLA’s national Board of Directors. She was also chair of the Financial Group and chair of the Business and Finance Division within SLA and served on numerous other committees as well. In 1980, the year in which she retired as head librarian of the National Office Library of Price Waterhouse & Company, Rosemary was elected to the SLA Hall of Fame. She was the author of Accounting Information Sources (Gale Research Company, 1970).

he Roman historian Tacitus, in a small monograph about the remarkable life and death of his fatherin-law, tells us that the only long-lasting consolation for those mourning the departed is “conscientia vitae bene actae,” the realization of a life well lived. This is certainly a consolation available to those who knew or who knew of the remarkable life of long-time SLA member Rosemary Demarest.

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✢ Rosemary Demarest died on Monday, June 6th, 2005, at the age of 91. A memorial service was held Tuesday, June 21st, at 3:00 pm, at St. James’ Church on Madison Avenue in New Yor

Rosemary Demarest was a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and began her librarian career in New York City as an assistant librarian for the Hanover Bank. The life of an assistant librarian for a proper financial giant was not, however, to last long. American sympathizers to the British cause at the outbreak of World War II actively sought civilian workers to travel to England to bulk up a work force stretched thin by the demands of war, and Rosemary was recruited at a meeting of the New York Junior League. She spent the “buzz bomb and blitz” years in London in the research department of the Office of Strategic Services. It is reasonable to speculate—but it is only speculation—that Rosemary’s long-time membership in the London-based Royal Society of Literature might have its origin in those wartime days.

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With Hitler defeated and the war successfully concluded, Rosemary returned to the United States, where she was appointed chief librarian for the Hanover Bank and, in 1947, joined SLA. In 1953, she went to the library staff at Price Waterhouse, where she stayed until her retirement in 1980.

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CHAPTER ANNOUNCEMENTS CHAPTER ANNOUNCEMENTS An Invitation To Readers

SLA-NY SNAP-SHOT

The editor of the newsletter reminds all members of the New York Chapter of SLA that the pages of ChapterNews are open to all. The editor would be very pleased to discuss and accept submissions in any of the following areas: ▲ Comings, goings, new jobs, new titles, retirements. ▲ Articles about day-to-day life in member libraries. ▲ Articles about SLA programs or social events you might have attended. ▲ Reflections on the profession: salaries, responsibilities, education, career path. ▲ Announcements of scholarships, awards, honors, whether those announcements are invitations to propose candidates or are announcements of winners. ▲ Library initiatives: acquisitions, marketing/awareness campaigns, organizational changes, etc. The ChapterNews is a wonderful way to maximize the value of the SLA experience, and a wonderful way to share your experiences and successes with your fellow librarians. The editor of ChapterNews, Chuck Lowry, can be reached at [email protected] or 212.592.4932.

Members could be found doing everything from the Jitterbug and the Bump, to the Hustle and the Electric Slide.

Remember the New York Chapter web site address!

www.sla-ny.org Check it out!!

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