DC/SLA Chapter Notes - February 2002

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February 2002 Volume 61, No. 5 Contents z z z z z z z z

What Went Right: Notes on Library Closings and Other Life Lessons Learned President's Corner The Best Kept Secret: Keep Telling Them That Cataloging Is Boring DCLA Spring International Program on Legal Research Inspiring Tales from the Pentagon's Librarians and Their Supporters New Committee Chairs on DC/SLA Board Career Day 2002 The Military Librarian's Group Event

News of Members Caryn S. Wesner-Early was a manuscript reviewer for Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse just published by MIT Press. Visit the book's Web site to find out about it or to order it: http://www.inventingmodernamerica.com Mary Nell Bryant has temporarily left the library world to become the Department of State's Attache for Press and Culture at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. She will be at post until Fall 2002, when she will return to Washington and librarianship. She can be reached by email at bryantmn@amembbelgrade.org

What Went Right: Notes on Library Closings and Other Life Lessons Learned Join DC/SLA for a lively evening of discussion and networking focused on recent information center closings and key insights into what lessons can be carried forward to your next position. Mary Ellen Bates, of Bates Information Services will moderate the discussion and Kimberly Allen, formerly of both the MCI and AIA libraries, and Jan Sykes, Information Management Services, Inc. and incoming president of the Illinois Chapter of SLA will be the featured speakers.

When: February 20, 2002, 6:00 to 8:00 pm Where: Kiplinger Washington Editors The Editors Building 1729 H Street, NW between 17th and 18th Streets Faragut West(Blue/Orange) orFaragut North(Red) Send completed registration to: (new address as of

http://units.sla.org/chapter/cdc/cnotes/2002/feb02.html

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. Chapter Notes, published 10 times per year is the newsletter of the DC Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). It is free to DC/SLA members.

Advertising rates effective September 2001 are: $95.001/4 page; $175.00 -1/2 page; $290.00 - full page. For information, please contact Chapter NotesBusiness Manager: Kelley Weber, Surface Transportation Board, 202/5651668, weberk@stb.dot.gov EDITORS' NOTE: Friday, February 8 is the deadline for

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January 22, 2002) Barbara Folensbee-Moore, Library Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP 1111 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20004 For credit card registrations, e-mail your information to bfolensbee-moore@morganlewis.com. The fax option is no longer available.

Due to fees incurred, all payments made by credit card will be non-refundable. Payment must be made in advance. No credit card payments will be accepted at the door.

All registrations must be received by Monday, February 18, 2002.

Registration Form: (Print-ready Form) Name ____________________________________________ Phone: _____________ E-mail: _______________________

materials which can be included in the March 2002 issue. The issue is distributed approximately three weeks after the deadline. The preferred submission format is a Word document sent via e-mail.

Materials for Chapter Notes should be sent to all of the editors: Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis, 1150 Eighteenth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036; 202/857-8223; fax 202/8578233; marie.kaddell@lexisnexis.com Jan Alfieri, The Association of Fundraising Professionals, (AFP) - formerly NSFRE, 1101 King Street, Suite 700, Alexandria, VA 22314; 703/519-8458; fax 703/684-0540; jalfieri@afpnet.org Layout: Amy Pass, Easter Seals, 700 13th Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC, 20005; amypass@mindspring.com Event announcements should also be submitted electronically to the DC/SLA Internet Committee chair and discussion list moderator:

Payment Method: _______ Check _______ VISA/MC If paying by credit card, include: Card number __________________________________ Card Type ________ VISA _______ Mastercard Expiration date ________ Name on Card ________________________________ Signature _____________________________________

Liz Farley, (List Moderator) International Monetary Fund, 700 19th Street, N.W, Washington, DC, 20431;phone 02/623-7042; efarley@cais.com Kristina Lively, (Webmaster) National Endowment for Democracy; 202/293-0300; fax 202/293-0258; kristina@ned.org, Send address changes for Chapter Notes to: SLA Headquarters, ATTN: Address/Name Changes, 1700 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009-2508.

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President's Corner

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by Sue O'Neill Johnson This has become quite a year so far! Here's an example. Senior Board Director, Anna McGowan, who is trying to send out letters to solicit financial support for Chapter programs, has been interrupted in her task. She is in an FDA building suspected of having anthrax, their mail was shut down for two months, they were unable to check in about 400 serials, the 2002 serial renewals didn't get done, and they are moving the library! Sadly, libraries where some board members worked have closed. And what about the Chapter Notes team, facing agonizing mail delays to get out the Newsletters?

These are some of the reasons why The D.C. Chapter Board is this month's "Tough Times Innovator." They have kept on going, adjusting, and doing an innovative job under unusual circumstances. Now at the midway point of the Board's "year," here are some examples of their innovation. z

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Before the official "year" started, the Board held a focus group to discuss goals, how to do more for members, and how to communicate better across committees. Each Committee Chair presented a plan, and most of these plans are under way.

This year our Hospitality Chair, Barbara Folensbee-Moore, has successfully piloted a Visa and Mastercard payment program. This is going well, saves time, helps procrastinators still come to programs, and relieves the hassle of mailing in checks.

Our Program Chair and Chair Elect, Anne Caputo, through the generosity of Factiva, printed and personally mailed invitations to the Holiday Party, and purchased gifts to honor future speakers at Chapter events. She has also organized joint programs with the Maryland Chapter, Virginia Chapter, DCLA, and the SLA Retired Members Caucus. Hotel banquet costs are going up but she was able to save members half the cost by providing a subsidy, again through Factiva, for the January "Disaster" lunch.

Our Past Chair, David Shumaker, has developed criteria for a competitive Chapter Travel Stipend Award to enable one lucky member to attend the Annual SLA meeting in Los Angeles in June, 2002. Watch for the announcement in the next Chapter Notes.

Our web master, Kristina Lively, has put together an initial redesign and management plan for the web site, which she originally designed in 1998. She has created a sizeable and competent committee and they are making the redesign a reality.

Our Chapter Discussion List Chair, Liz Farley, is making sure that every Chapter member with e-mail is on the list. With problematic mail service, we want to be sure that time sensitive announcements get to our members (SLA-CDC@lists.sla.org).

We are definitely moving in the direction of more dependence on electronic services. (don't worry, we will not abandon our members who are still paper-based). z

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Our Corresponding Secretary, Estelle Alexander, has created a major publicity program of DC/SLA's activities with other information professional organizations in the region. This is in turn attracting new attendees to our events, and providing us with better information on their programs as well.

The Second VP, Mandy Baldridge, and Lynn McCay, Chair of the Consulting Committee, put together a new plan, including marketing of the plan, which provides a consulting service from the Chapter to the D.C. Community. This service provides one free consultation, and then, access to a list of professional consultants if they further

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assistance is desired. z

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Plans for a Young Professionals Group are under development by Marla Schlaffer, the new Young Professionals Group Sub Committee Chair.

Proposals are now in for a community project, led by Kenlee Ray, Director, and the committee has already received two $500 donations.

Our International Projects Committee Chairs, Becky Milton and Marcelle Saint -Arnaud initiated a "Twinning Program" for SLA Chapters, Divisions and individuals to support ninety-percent of the cost of a member from a developing country for two years. The Committee is now selecting the DC Chapter "Twin".

Our Chapter donated $3,000, and was one of the first SLA units to support the new David Bender Endowment Fund to support SLA to increase its international focus.

And finally, back to the Chapter Notes team. The whole process of getting out Chapter Notes was slowed by the impact of the events of September 11th. Marie Kaddell, Editorin-Chief, got emergency help from Fredrick Heller (now the Government Relations Chair) to speed up the layout, and get it to the printer earlier to face the slow mailing process.

Marie initiated a combined November/December issue to give the committee a little breathing room, and to better tolerate the slow mails. Jan Alfieri arranged for electronic submission of mailing labels to the printer to speed the mailing process. Amy Pass, the new Layout Editor, now sends the electronic copy to the web site as soon as it is finished (http://www.sla.org/chapter/cdc), which beats the mail by about a week!

Congratulations to our innovative board and their persistence in the face of some truly tough times.

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The Best Kept Secret: Keep Telling Them That Cataloging Is Boring

By Suzanne C. Pilsk For those of you who didn't know, I am a cataloger for the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. I get to catalog a wide variety of topics. Picture, if you will, a sublocation of one of our branches that is dedicated ONLY to sea mammals. I spend time in the Q schedules. I explore the E's, D's and G's. I get to spend a lot of time in the N schedules as well as the S's, and U-V's. Books and materials appear for the National Air and Space Museum's branch as well as for the American History branch. I sometimes need to remember I'm cataloging for the Horticulture branch or the Botany branch - two different points of view to some (at first glance) similar topics.

What challenges did I have today? Lets take a peek and see. First, there was a book titled Glasgow's Ghost Shirt by Sam Maddra for the Anthropology Library. It is about a shirt believed to be from the Massacre at Wounded Knee that ended up in Glasgow, Scotland with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. I had to establish Sam Maddra's name because she wasn't already established as a name authority. And, well, she is a SHE with the name Sam and it would help catalogers and patrons in the future to know if they have something written by the same Sam or not. I then had to focus on a series of titles on Hydrogen Peroxide as a fuel source for rockets. These titles were for the National Air and Space Museum. They were all together and the series had not been established. I had to form the series title (with help from the senior authorities librarian) and establish the corporate bodies names.

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If I had not done this work, then our searchers might not have been able to hit all the titles that belong together. Now the corporate body name is established so that in the future, catalogers will know the proper form of the name. I am still working on the digital version of an issue of the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin "The Horse and the Blackfoot Indian Culture" by John C. Ewers. Once I have that completed in MARC, I will convert it to Dublin Core to be embedded into the digital version so the metadata will be part of the HTML. I have been all over the LC schedules and I will admit that sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the diversity. I need to make sure that I am putting a text in the right branch with the proper call number - the long dead and fossilized brachopods vs the live brachopods and their cousins. Materials for the African Art Museum branch may be on the art of the Benin, the Kingdom of Benin, or someplace that is now Benin but was called something else when the text was written. I won't even go into the former USSR. In the end, I know that I am lucky to be working in a collection that has such a wide range of topics and audiences.

But even if that seems daunting at times (and I feel like I must turn to our senior catalogers for the 5 millionth time during the week); I cannot say it's boring. Between analyzing the subject of the book, finding the access point, and establishing subjects, names, and series‌cataloging cannot be considered dull. Those reference librarians have no clue what they are missing. How many times do they have to say, "down the hall to the left is the men's and to the right is the women's"? Or "10 cents a copy and we don't give out change"?

I am sure that they also get their challenges. I am confident that they, too, get to explore their collections in depth. I am the first to recognize that they certainly get their share of intriguing questions that take them by surprise. Yet, I don't think I am in the mood to swap my cataloging for reference. Don't tell them, but I think I would just get bored.

LC Classification Cheat Sheet: A General Work B Philosophy/Religion C History of Science D History Europe, Asia, etc.

E-F History of Western Hemisphere G Geography, Maps, Anthropology, Recreation H Social Sciences J Political Science K Law L Education M Music N Art P Language/Literature Q Science R Medicine S Agriculture T Technology U-V Military/Naval Sci. Z Bibliography. Library Science. Info. Resources

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DCLA Spring International Program on Legal Research, (Co-Sponsored by DC/SLA)

Inspiring Tales from the Pentagon's Librarians and Their Supporters

Join DCLA at a jointly-sponsored program on legal research. The program, titled "Documents and Technological Resources for Researchers in International Law" will include panelists Rubens Medina, Law Librarian of Congress and Director, Library of Congress Law Library and Patrick Daillier, Professor of

The Military Librarians Group of DCSLA and the Military Library Division of SLA will cosponsor a special evening program at Computers in Libraries 2002 on Thursday, March 14, from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Jerri Knihnicki, Chief, Research & Information Services, Pentagon Library, and Dean

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Law, University of Paris. Following a presentation by each panelist, there will be a question-and-answer session. The program will end with a dessert and wine reception.

The program will be on Monday, March 4, 2002 from 6-8 pm at the Pickford Room in the Madison Building of the Library of Congress. The cost is free, but reservations are necessary. To RSVP, contact Andrea Morris Gruhl, DCLA Vice-President/President Elect by e-mail at andreagruhl@aol.com or by phone at 301-596-5460

McKinney of BMS Catastrophe, Inc. will be featured. They will talk about the library recovery efforts after September 11, 2001.

For more information, contact Diane Schnurrpusch (703)767-8022 or Sharon Lenius (703)601-2709

Back to Top New Committee Chairs on DC/SLA Board Congratulations and welcome to the new members of the Chapter's Advisory Board. We hope our members will get in touch with them to volunteer and get involved with the Chapter. The Chapter thanks the following members for their service in Chapter leadership roles: Roberta Geier as Student Affairs and Young Professionals Chair, and previously as Government Relations Chair; Greta Ober as Membership Chair, and previously as a Newsletter Editor as well as Chapter List and Website Chair; Dana Bell-Russel as Archivist; and Mari-Jana Phelps as Chapter Notes Business Manager.

The contact information for the new Advisory Board members is as follows:

Chair, Students/Young Professionals Chair: Karen Huffman, National Geographic Society 202-857-7061 | khuffman@ngs.org Chair, Student Scholarships Subcommittee: Una Hildebrandt, Corp. Executive Board, IRC 202 777-5214 | hildebru@executiveboard.com Co-Chairs, Young Professionals Group Subcommittee: Marla Schlaffer, Alcohol Policies Project Center for Science in the Public Interest 1875 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20009 202-332-9110 | mschlaffer@hotmail.com

Membership Chair Alphonse Vinh, National Public Radio 202-513-2352 | avinh@npr.org Chapter Archivist Judy Grosberg, National Cancer Institute 301-496-6756 | grosberj@occ.nci.nih.gov Chapter Notes Business Manager Kelley Weber, Surface Transportation Board 202-565-1668 | weberk@stb.dot.gov

Beth Perell, Plural 7101 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 1125 Bethesda MD, 20814-4882

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301-657-1385 | Fax: 301-657-0025 Business: perellb@plural.com Personal: Bcperell@aol.com Back to Top Career Day 2002 March 2, 2002 - University of Maryland - 8am to 1:30pm Career Day 2002 is intended to benefit special librarians at all stages in their careers, but most especially those librarians entering the profession. Please join us to learn, to share your experiences with "newbies," and to make new contacts and friends.

Schedule: 8 - 9 a.m. Check-in, coffee and pastries 9 - 9:45 Q&A with candidates for DC/SLA president 10 -12:15 Panels featuring professionals from a variety of special libraries 12:15 Lunch and networking time Price: DC/SLA Members and students: $15 Non-Members: $20 Location: University of Maryland College of Information Services Hornbake Building Payment must be made in advance. Due to catering requirements, no registrations can be accepted at the door.

Send completed registration to: (new address as of January 22, 2002) Barbara Folensbee-Moore, Library Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP 1111 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20004 For credit card registrations, e-mail your information to bfolensbee-moore@morganlewis.com. The fax option is no longer available.

Due to fees incurred, all payments made by credit card will be non-refundable. Payment must be made in advance. No credit card payments will be accepted at the door.

Registration Form: (Print-ready Form) Name ____________________________________________

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Phone: _____________ E-mail: _______________________ Payment Method: _______ Check _______ VISA/MC If paying by credit card, include: Card number __________________________________ Card Type ________ VISA _______ Mastercard Expiration date ________ Name on Card ________________________________ Signature _____________________________________

Back to Top The Military Librarian's Group of the Washington DC Chapter of The Special Libraries Association Invites you to a dinner program featuring Jean Ebbert & Marie-Beth Hall, authors of Crossed Currents: Navy Women in a Century of Change and their soon-to-be published book, The First, the Few, the Forgotten, the story of the Yeomen (F) of World War I When: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 Where: Union Street Public House, 121 Union Street, Alexandria, VA What: Dinner in the George Washington Room, followed by the program.

Time: Registration - 6:00 p.m. Dinner 6:30 p.m.

Cost: $22- DCSLA Military Library Group members, $25 - Others Authors will have books available for purchase after the program. Dinner includes salad, entrĂŠe, dessert, and tea, coffee, or soda.

Take Metro to King Street Station. Rides will be available upon request or the DASH bus can be taken from the Metro to within 3 blocks of restaurant). Parking garages (prepaid parking approx. $5) and limited on-street parking available on Union Street. For more information, call Diane Schnurrpusch at 703-767-8022 or dschnurr@dtic.mil.

Registrations must be received by Saturday, February 23, 2002 Send registrations to Diane Schnurrpusch, 5836 Oakland Park Dr., Burke, VA 22015 Make checks payable to DC/SLA. Name_____________________________________________________ Phone_____________________________________________________

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Email______________________________________________________ Back to Top About Us

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Special Libraries Association | DC/SLA Chapter | PO Box 287 Benjamin Franklin Station | Washington, D.C. 20044 webmaster | Last Modified 02/25/2003 | You are at http://units.sla.org/chapter/cdc/cnotes/2002/feb02.html

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