DC/SLA Chapter Notes - May 2006

May 2006 Volume 66 No. 9

President’s Corner: SLA Membership

http://www.sla.org/Chapter/cdc

Directory

Inside this issue:

Submitted by Shirley Loo, sloo@crs.loc.gov

Have you ever looked at your membership information in the SLA online directory? If you've never looked at it or if you've looked at it more than a year ago, please check your information.

You'll find the online directory under the "SLA Community" category at www.sla.org. The directory information is restricted to members so you will need to key in your user ID and password. If you need help, contact membership@sla.org. When you key your name in the search box, you'll see what information is made available to others. In using the online directory in the past few years, I've encountered missing information (no address, phone number or email address), incorrect phone numbers, incorrect work information, and incorrect email addresses.

If your email address is wrong, you will not receive emails sent to the chapter discussion list and you will not receive electronic ballots from the DC Chapter or from SLA. The chapter will be voting electronically in the near future on whether to add a new Board position of Treasurer-elect. In the fall, we will vote electronically for positions on the Chapter Board. (A paper ballot will be sent to members without email access.)

Go to www.sla.org/cfcode/profile.cfm to change your entry, as Kristina Lively, Membership Chair, suggested recently in an email to the discussion list. We want to keep you in the loop and we need your help. We also want to keep you as a member and you may not have realized that you neglected to renew your membership.

In the meantime, I am preparing the Chapter's annual report to SLA and we are in good shape with numerous programs such as the well-received "How Congress Really Works". This was the second program where registration closed before the stated deadline. After listening to the dynamic and knowledgeable Judy Schneider, participants were full of praise. The program was co-sponsored with the new Government Information Division and the collaboration was fruitful. The Book Club headed by Eileen Deegan had a good turnout on April 20 when they discussed “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.”

We just had the 2006 Joint Spring Workshop on "21st Century Competencies for Information Professionals" with over 100 participants. We will have a marvelous Volunteer Appreciation Reception at the U.S. Botanic Garden on May 4. On May 17, we'll have a timely podcasting program. We'll have a presence at the annual conference in Baltimore with co-hosting the International Reception on June 12 and co-sponsoring two programs on June 13.

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President’s Corner

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Podcasting/Click-U-Live --A few spaces left!

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Student Scholarships

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Report: How Congress Really Works

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Chapter Notes editor needed

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Coolidge Library Volunteers

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Open Access Report

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DC/SLA Nominations

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Read about the new products and services from: • • • • • • •

Dialog InfoCurrent OCLC Capcon Library Associates Trak Legal EOS International Factiva

Check us out on the Web http://www.sla.org/Chapter/cdc/

Next Newsletter Deadline For June/July issue Is May 21 Email bferry@ngs.org Hold the date!

Sept. 18

Join Mary Ellen Bates for a look at the Web 2.0 More details to follow…

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Special Libraries Association assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to SLA’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official views of SLA. Acceptance of advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product by SLA. Subscriptions: Chapter Notes is free to DC/SLA members.

Subscriptions to non-members are available at $10 per year.

Advertising: Advertising rates effective September 1997 are: $95—1/4 page; $175—1/2 page; $290— full page. For information regarding advertisements, contact the DC/SLA Chapter Notes Business Manager:

Ana Echerman Email: aecherman@morganlewis.com

DC/SLA Members Win National News Group Awards Ellie Briscoe (National Geographic Society) and Kee Malesky (National Public Radio) will be honored at SLA's News Division's Awards Banquet Tuesday evening, June 13. Briscoe and Malesky will receive the News Division's "Agnes Henebry Roll of Honor Award." Henebry is among the Division's most admired and respected news librarians.

Read more about the award at: http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/henebry.html This award named for Henebry is given to a member or former member for exemplary service to the Division and to the profession.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Deadlines for Chapter Notes are the third Monday of the month for the following month’s issue.

Deadline for the May issue is May 21. The issue is distributed approximately two weeks after the deadline. The preferred submission format is a Word document sent via email. You should receive an email acknowledgement of your submission.

Materials for Chapter Notes should be sent to the Editor:

Barbara Ferry Libraries & Information Services National Geographic Society 1145 17th St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 Phone: 202-857-7051 Email: bferry@ngs.org DC/SLA Co-Web Master-- Cassandra Shieh, Catholic News Service

202-541-3254; Fax: 202-541-3255 cshieh@catholicnews.com cassandrashieh@hotmail.com

Podcasting/Website Fast Content Program on May 17 Only a few spaces left!

Where: National Geographic Society (1146 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.) [Note: This entrance has stairs. Disabled access through another entrance—let us know if you need directions.]

Session One: Podcasting Potential for Special Libraries When: Noon-1:30pm (brown bag) How: Sign up with Barbara Ferry (bferry@ngs.org) Seating is limited to the first 50 to sign up.

Cost: Nothing – bring your own lunch.

DC/SLA Co-Web Master: Allegra Moothart; 202-955-2141; amoothart@usnews.com.

Send address changes for Chapter Notes to: Chapter Notes Editor ATTN: Address/Name Changes 5000 Euclid Drive Kensington, MD 20895

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Session Two: Always Fresh! Fast Content for Your Website and Users When: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm How: Sign up with Barbara Ferry (bferry@ngs.org) Seating is limited to the first 50 to sign up.

Cost: Free to SLA members. $10 for non-members.

DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

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President’s Column, Cont’d from page 1 Two chapter members, R. James King and Ann Sweeney will receive awards at the SLA awards ceremony. In addition, Ellie Briscoe and Kee Malesky will receive the Agnes Henebry Roll of Honor Award from the News Division. June would have ended the SLA year but this year we are in transition to a calendar year. The elected and appointed Board will continue to December 31. Thanks again for the additional service of all of the volunteers.

Spearheaded by Past President Sue O'Neill Johnson, this chapter has raised almost $2,000 from SLA chapters and members in support of Muhammad Yaqub Chaudhary, Chief Librarian, the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan. The campus of the University was destroyed in the October, 2005 earthquake in that area with many dead.

Since computers were identified as the greatest need, Barbie Keiser negotiated with the World Computer Exchange for the donation of 100 computers. More money is needed for shipment of the computers and other sources of funding are being investigated. If you have suggestions, contact Sue O'Neill Johnson or Barbie Keiser. This shipment would be the first to Pakistan by the World Computer Exchange.

In celebration of National Library Week, Library Director Kate Martin at McKenna Long & Aldridge had a Caribbean Night party for the lawyers and other staff members recently. It was sponsored by the firm and produced by Kate with delicious food, live music, decorations, etc. What a party! I was glad to be invited. I was also invited by the Bach Consort to their concert presented April 21 at the Library of Congress when the contract turning over sound recordings and other material to LC was signed by Librarian of Congress James Billington and Bach Consort founder F. Reilly Lewis. In appreciation for work done by Sue O'Neill Johnson, Erin Clougherty, and Anna McGowan, Immediate Past President Sheryl Rosenthal and I enjoyed great seats for the concert. Sue and Erin were seated in the same row as the composer of a short piece played during the concert; Anna was unable to be present.

We now have our list of chapter members who have received SLA awards on the website. Look in the category "About Our Chapter" and click on "Chapter Awardees". Here is the URL http://www.sla.org/chapter/cdc/slaAwardee.html Thanks to Kitty Scott for help in identifying some of the awardees and to Kristina Lively for putting the information up in an attractive manner. We will have the list of recipients of awards from the DC Chapter up in the near future. Thanks to Past President Lyle Minter for providing a list of recipients of the Member of the Year Award. Thanks also to Susan Fifer Canby and Anne Caputo for their chapter history update from 1991-2005 which made compilation of the Board of Directors award and scholarship recipients easier. We are celebrating our accomplishments!

2006 Student Scholarships InfoCurrent Scholarship $2,000 Catherine A. Jones Memorial Scholarship $2,000 Two scholarships of $2,000 each will be awarded in August 2006 by the Washington, D.C. Chapter for studies leading to a Master’s Degree from an accredited graduate Library Science program.

Applicants must be members of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of Special Libraries Association or attending an accredited graduate Library Science program in the Washington, D.C. Chapter area. Applicants must submit an application form, names of two references, and a statement of goals for pursuing a library career.

Winning applicants will be selected and awards presented in August 2006.

Application forms and additional information will be available later in May on the Washington, D.C. Chapter website at [http://www.sla.org/chapter/cdc/] or from Michael Kolakowski, Scholarship Chair, at mkolakowski@crs.loc.gov.

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DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

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CRS Legislative Expert Delivers a Memorable Lesson on How Congress Really Works Submitted by Eileen Deegan, deeganeg@state.gov In her April 10 presentation on “How Congress Really Works,” co-sponsored by DC/SLA and the SLA Government Information Division, Congressional Research Service Senior Specialist Judy Schneider offered an unconventional, erudite, witty, and—above all—educational tour of the U.S. legislative process. Judy, a co-author of the highly recommended Congressional Deskbook 2005-2007 and adviser to members of Congress, generously donated her time to speak at this wellattended event held at Covington & Burling.

The core of Judy’s lecture was her description of the intricate legislative process by which bills are passed or defeated – a description loaded with congressional “buzz words” and humorous anecdotes and comments. Unfortunately, a written summary doesn’t adequately capture how entertaining her lecture was. Nevertheless, it does serve to communicate her many instructive points.

At the start of her presentation, Judy spotlighted some inaccuracies and incomplete pictures of Congress that are widely taught in civics classes. Chief among these is the idea that Congress’ job is to pass laws. She emphasized that Congress was actually created “to stop bad law from being enacted.” Of the approximately 10,000 pieces of legislation that are introduced during the first and second congressional sessions combined, only 400 become law. Another inaccuracy she addressed is the idea that Congress is driven by policy alone. She asserted that politics and procedure also drive Congress, and that all three factors must be in equal balance. If any of these are out of whack, “your bill is dead.”

Turning to legislative procedure, Judy noted that introducing legislation is not hard, and that members introduce bills and resolutions for a variety of reasons. Once introduced, a bill is referred to the committee or committees that have jurisdiction over that bill’s subject. Judy remarked that while the House committee system is very important, the Senate committee system is less integral to the process. The seniority system is alive and well in the Senate, she said, so that “if you outlive everyone, you get to be a committee chair.” By contrast, in the House, committee members are handpicked and policy outcomes depend on who is selected. Both houses, however, share the following characteristic: if the committee chair hates a bill, it goes nowhere.

In discussing a bill’s committee stage, Judy warned the audience: “beware of the referral system.” She explained that in the House, the Speaker has the power to sequentially refer a bill to multiple committees and set time limits on how long each committee may consider it. In the Senate, by contrast, referrals are generally made to a single committee.

The particular Senate committee to which a bill is referred depends on how the bill has been drafted and the bill’s predominant subject. That rule holds unless the senators have agreed through “unanimous consent” to refer a bill to more than one committee.

Judy stressed that, overall, the Senate “lives and dies by unanimous consent.” The Congressional Deskbook 20052007 defines “unanimous consent agreement” as “a device used in the Senate to expedite legislation” and conduct much of the Senate’s legislative business. She said that the House, by contrast, is the “procedural chamber,” and needs to be much more structured than the policy-oriented Senate. She urged the audience to learn about the critical role the House Rules Committee -- an arm of the majority party’s leadership - plays in maintaining House structure.

Cont’d next page.

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DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

How Congress Really Works cont’d from previous page

While on the topic of committee hearings, Judy observed that they are “staged” and are held to make Americans riled up enough to call Congress. When televised hearings in the mid-1980s were deemed too boring, the “celebrity hearing” was born. Since then, Hollywood stars like Sally Field, Jessica Lange, Richard Gere, and Ben Affleck have testified on such issues as agriculture, Tibet, and the minimum wage.

According to Judy, 10 percent of bills get beyond hearings to the markup where committee members consider the legislation’s provisions and proposed revisions in detail. At the end of the markup, the bills that gain committee approval are reported to the House or Senate floors. Judy outlined the various legislative maneuvers employed during the floor debate, floor action, and conference action stages, including filibusters, modified rules, amendments between the houses, and conference committees.

Judy identified which congressional documents are the most valuable research tools. She called the committee report that accompanies most bills reported from committee, incredibly useful for its summary of a bill’s hearing, markup, and minority supplemental views. She recommended that the audience read a conference committee’s joint explanatory statement, rather than its conference report, which is only about procedure. Finally, she suggested that searchers do a better job of mining the high quality information available in the Library of Congress’ THOMAS database.

In concluding, Judy joked that a fourth “P,” patience, could be added to the three she spoke of earlier -- policy, politics, and procedure. After all, in Congress, “nothing happens quickly.” She closed with this thought: “The rules make sense” and are exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted. In sum, “the Founding Fathers designed a system for all of us to influence.”

Note: Thank you to Peggy Garvin, Government Information Division, Chair-Elect, for her editing contributions.

Want to know all the news before it’s in Chapter Notes?

We are looking for a new DC/SLA Chapter Notes editor for fall 2006. Contact Barbara Ferry to learn more about the job (202-857-7051 or bferry@ngs.org)

DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

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Volunteers Needed for Teen Reading Program at Coolidge Library We need volunteers for the final sessions of book interviews for the Coolidge Teen Reading Program on Tuesday May 2nd and Thursday May 18th. The interviews will be in two sessions each day: one from about 8:45am to 11:15am and the second in from 12:30pm to 3:15pm.

The acquisition of lots of new teen novels purchased with grants from DC/SLA gave the program a real boost this year, with the largest number of student participants that we have ever had and the largest number of books that have been read.

DC/SLA members processed the books and provided volunteers for book interviews.

Students need to complete the required book interviews in order to qualify for reading achievement awards which will be presented at the annual Library Reception on Thursday, May 25th.

Last year over 50 students achieved the reading goal. Thanks to your support, this year we expect as many as 80 to do so -provided that the library has enough manpower to finish all the reading interviews.

Please let Lynn Kauffman, Coolidge's librarian, know if you are available either of those times so she can work with teachers to arrange student schedules. Lynn's email is Kauffman@prodigy.net and her phone number is 202-576-6143.

Open Access: Report from the April 6th DC/SLA Event

By Sue O’Neill Johnson, Member of the DC/SLA International Relations Committee On Thursday evening April 6th a large group enjoyed a stimulating evening of discussion at the celebration for International Librarians’ Day, held at Kiplinger Headquarters on H St in downtown DC. The topic was Open Access (the free availability of peer-reviewed literature on the public internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles.). On hand were Melissa Hagemann, Program Manager, Information Program, Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation (NYC) and Dr. Leslie Chan, Associate Director of Bioline International, and Program Supervisor for the Joint Program in New Media Studies and the International Studies program at the University of Toronto, Canada WHERE IT ALL STARTED George Soros organized and funded the meeting in Budapest Hungary (December 2001) that initiated the Budapest Open Access Initiative (both of our speakers attended this meeting). http://www.soros.org/openaccess/. There, two main strategies were agreed upon to achieve open access goals, to develop 1) open access journals which would require a new business model; an example is NLM’s BioMed Central, which now opens access to 150 health sciences journals, and 2)institutional/subject based repositories.

With software which is “Open Archives Initiative compliant” all work at an institution is deposited in a repository by using interoperable software, which allows the works in the repositories to be searched and harvested. There are now directories online to cover both of these approaches, such as the Guide to Open Access Publishing and Directory of Open Access Repositores.

The Open Society Initiative targets 67 countries. So far nine countries have begun initiatives: Serbia, South Africa, Ukraine, Lithuania, China, Zimbabwe, Poland, Macedonia, and Russia in 2007.

Dr Chan in his remarks pointed out that it is not enough for researchers in developing countries to read about western research results. This is a good start, but they also need to know how countries with similar resources to theirs are doing in research, the “south to south” results. Publishers in developing countries have trouble in supporting and sustaining their own professional journals Their works are not being distributed internationally, they are not able to view the results of others, and libraries cannot pay the costs of subscriptions to needed research journals. Open access journals and subject-based repositories on line are needed.

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DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006

DC/SLA Nominations The Nominating Committee (Susan Fifer Canby, Sheryl Rosenthal, Eileen Abels, Marilyn Bromley, Anne Caputo) will soon be considering members who might be willing to serve the chapter as an officer or board member. If you have an interest in being considered for any of the elected positions and are a member in good standing, please contact Susan Fifer Canby sfiferca@ngs.org. The positions that will be available in January 2007 (elections will be this fall): -Vice President - President-elect (Program Planner) 1 year term; 3 year commitment -Treasurer-elect/Treasurer 3 year term (new elected position to be voted on by the membership soon) -Recording Secretary (minutes, correspondence) 2 year term -Corresponding Secretary (may not be required) 1 year term -Second Vice President (maintains the Manual and suppports the Vice President) 1 year term -Director (may serve as membership chair the first year; may serve as corporate liaison the second year) 2 year term If you have an interest in serving the chapter, working with a great group of your colleagues and are not sure of the opportunities contact Susan Fournier who will begin her term as President in January 2007 and will be looking for members to head up committees. See the chapter webpage htttp://www.sla.org/wdc for description of committees.

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Open Access Report Cont’d from page 8 TYPES OF OPEN ACCESS; Who pays for this access?

The author in a peer reviewed journal(or author’s organization) pays a processing fee; more and more grants now include that fee as part of the grant; and the author can sign a waiver that he agrees to give this article open access. Hybrid models give the author a choice; he can pay the fee, and there is open access; or the journal does not give access. Advertising also helps with cost. Big publishers, such as Oxford, Springer, National Academy of Sciences, and Blackwell are experimenting with open access in their publications.

A REVOLUTION? This field is moving fast. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) led the movement for access to publicly funded research. According to Dr Chan, in March 2004 the US House Commerce Committee set up a voluntary policy, a U.S. government request that deposit of peer-reviewed manuscripts from U.S. government-funding, be made to an open and freely accessible repository on the Internet; the value added by the journal after the final manuscript is submitted is thus protected. NIH has requested public access to results of NIH-funded research, and deposit into PubMed Centeral.

Compliance has been low up to this point, with under 5% depositing manuscripts, with even a lower percentage of compliance outside NIH. It was only on March 10, 2006 that the National Library of Medicine, an NIH Institute, endorsed the recommendation to make mandatory a policy that all those receiving government funding make research results openly available; and that any (time) embargo for publication of these findings be only six months. After all, the federal government pays for the research; authors hand off the results to journals that then add value and charge back the costs to all, including the original funder, to read these results.

Libraries have been the huge cost centers that buy these research results in journals, and prices continue to rise on publishers’ business models offered to libraries. There is little data, yet, on effect on sales of open access, but early indicators are that journal and article sales will increase with more exposure. Also, academics who must “publish or perish” find that peer reviewed open access journals are held in equal esteem with those of costly publishers I their institutions, and with more ways to read their work, numbers on citations of their work are greatly increasing, a major criteria for academic administrators to judge their value in the research community.

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DC/SLA Chapter Notes | May 2006