The March 15, 2008 issue of Library Journal includes this year's Movers and Shakers. Congratulations to those selected!
From the 2009 nomination guidelines:
emerging leaders in the library world. Our eighth annual Movers & Shakers supplement will profile 50-plus up-and-coming individuals from across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative, and making a difference. From librarians to vendors to others who work in the library field, Movers & Shakers 2009 will celebrate the new professionals who are moving our libraries ahead.
Lists:
Cindi Trainor over at Citegeist is putting together a spreadsheet of all Movers and Shakers to date (2002 - 2008) so we can have a look at the demographic breakdown. Read Cindi's post and give us a hand with this! (Many hands make light work)...
Jessamyn West has made a briefer version of this list - Congrats to Library Journal's Movers and Shakers if you just want to scan the names.
Movers and Shakers State by State - including this year and previous years.
Introduction by Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief: Transformative Librarians
Form for 2009 nominations (due November 24, 2008)
Acknowledgements [appears to be incomplete]
The Movers and Shakers!
Maria Redburn - Bedford Public Library
Grace Under Pressure
Becoming manager of the Bedford Public Library, which had closed briefly in 2005, was a risky career move for Maria Redburn: city council members were considering outsourcing it to LSSI. But as a Bedford resident who had always dreamed of living and working in the same community and making a difference for her neighbors, she took on the challenge of restoring library service.
Marshall Shore - Maricopa County Library District
The Man Who Said No to Dewey
When MCLD began to design the new Perry Branch for the community of Gilbert, Shore took the opportunity to ask the local residents what they desired in a public library. Community members said they wanted a library they could browse in and explore, with books easily available in broad subject areas, much like—you guessed it—a bookstore.
Hilary Davis - North Carolina State University Libraries
In Context
Kathleen Brown, NCSU Libraries director for planning and research, calls Davis a pioneer in the use of analytics. But for Davis, detailed statistical analysis of the collection is only half the job. The other half is understanding “the research and teaching cultures” the science collection supports.
Jim Cheng - University of California-San Diego
Films 'R' Us
Realizing that East Asian studies professors at University of California–San Diego (UCSD) were increasingly using popular media for research and teaching, librarian Jim Cheng built an unparalleled collection of East Asian films for them. This now-renowned collection (including posters, too) has enabled faculty and student research on a wide variety of topics.
Darci Hanning - Oregon State Library
Giving Back
...Darci Hanning felt the need to “'give back' to society in a more direct way—librarianship became that way.” And “give back” she has. The Plinkit project (oregon.plinkit.org), developed for the Oregon State Library, is based on the open source Plone Content Management System and provides 36 rural Oregon libraries free, content-rich, easy-to-update web sites that can be maintained locally. Each web site provides libraries with an events calendar, incoming and outgoing RSS feeds, catalog search, and links to databases (including remote authentication), plus pages staff can update themselves. All for free—“And free is a very good price,” as the Plinkit web site proclaims. It's also expanding to three more states through the Plinkit Collaborative (www.plinkit.org).
Allyson Mower - University of Utah
Thrill Seeker
Though she's not even finished with her MLIS yet, she's been providing access to information at the University of Utah's Eccles Health Sciences Library through her work on the Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Education Library (library.med.utah.edu/NOVEL) and the library's wiki, as well as the classes she teaches on database searching. Now, as coordinator for the university's Institutional Repository (ir.utah.edu), she is creating its database, soliciting content, and negotiating copyright issues.
David Lee King - Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
User-Centered Technologist
Librarians agree: David Lee King is your go-to guy for simplifying complex technology. “He has that rare ability to take tough tech and make it easy to understand and get excited about,” says Kathy Dempsey, former editor-in-chief, Computers in Libraries. TSCPL executive director Gina Millsap concurs: “David communicates ideas in ways that are accessible, inclusive, and humorous. His laid-back style encourages others to participate and believe they can do this stuff, too.”
Christopher Harris - Genesee Valley Board of Cooperative Educational Services
Deep Impact
Disappointed with vendor-provided library portals, Harris decided to tailor his own system for member institutions. His Fish4Info.org portal, which turns MARC-formatted files into nodes within Drupal (an open source content management system), allows users to manipulate and add to the records. Half the member libraries now enjoy use the systemwide catalog, taking advantage of its capabilities to append pathfinders, calendars, and students' book reviews, tagging, book ratings, and social bookmarking.
Steven Bowers, DALNET
Extending OPACs
Steven Bowers, director of the 20-member Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET), wants to expand library collections and digital projects to include materials created by the interactive online community. That's why he enabled librarians to incorporate YouTube videos and make them viewable within the online catalog, with full MARC records, ultimately increasing public access to valuable digital data. DALNET's own pilot project began with videos of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches, which were made available through member libraries' catalogs.
Evette Atkin - Michigan Library Consortium
Multitalented
Evette Atkin says her wide-ranging interests feed her work for the Michigan Library Consortium (MLC), as a trainer, and as leader of the statewide development of Evergreen, an open source catalog debuting in pilot libraries there this summer. Years of teaching violinists of all ages and abilities helped her adapt instruction to librarians' existing skills and interests; origami trained her in “precision and attention to intricate detail.”
Elisabeth Jacobsen Marrapodi - Trinitas Hospital
Pathfinder
A different perspective is what she delivers in her online explorations—Marrapodi believes that “immersive learning environments offer librarianship a chance to repackage and reinvent the way we deliver information.” Inside Second Life, Marrapodi has shadowed physicians, produced a short film illustrating the potential of 3-D applications for clinicians, and interviewed virtual world counselors on applications of “avatar therapy” and cybertherapy services.
Char Booth - Ohio University
Collaborative Experimentation
Booth's “Skype a Librarian” innovation enables virtual text, video, and audio reference from patrons' PCs or library kiosks, taking full advantage of freeware for cutting-edge service. This lets librarians “serve patrons where and how they naturally function,” build connections with distance/international students, and potentially personalize reference service across understaffed branches and service points.
Michelle Boulé - University of Houston Library
Geek Librarian
A member of ALA's Library Information and Technology Association (LITA) since 2003, Boulé is often working on new ways librarians can participate virtually. She ran Library and Information Resources Week with Meredith Farkas in 2006 as part of HigherEd BlogCon (www.higheredblogcon.com), the first blog-based higher education online conference. And in 2007, she, Farkas, and four others drew on this experience to create Five Weeks to a Social Library (www.sociallibraries.com/course), a free, grass-roots online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries.
Tim Spalding - LibraryThing, LLC
Metadata Man
With LibraryThing (librarything.com), Portland, ME–based web developer/publisher Tim Spalding has repurposed the library catalog into a social web application and, in the process, made cataloging fun. “LibraryThing brings into large-scale practice what the most visionary among us can only talk about,” says Don Yarman, assistant director, Delaware County District Library, OH—“folksonomies, crowd-sourcing, a populist concern for authority, and a cooperative method for constructing it.”
Caleb Tucker-Raymond - Multnomah County Library
Never Satisfied
Caleb Tucker-Raymond might have developed Oregon's statewide digital reference service, L-Net (www.oregonlibraries.net), from the ground up, but according to Jim Scheppke, Oregon State Librarian, he's not resting on his laurels. “For Caleb, the status quo is never good enough,” he says. “His fine mind is always working on how to make virtual reference service better.”
Nancy Teger - Florida Department of Education
Dynamo
Nancy Teger is known for getting things done. When the Florida Department of Education (DOE) couldn't fund databases for every school in the state, Teger, DOE's program director for media services, got them by working with the state library. When school librarians lost their sense of direction under the pressure of high-stakes testing and level funding, she brought them together to create an evaluation model for school libraries, ExC3EL—Expectations for Collaboration, Collections, and Connections to Enhance Learning.
Jessica Moyer - College of St. Catherine
Reader's Best Friend
...Moyer started conducting research herself and spreading that knowledge to help librarians improve their RA [readers' advisory] service and to use 2.0 services for NextGens. As an LIS educator, she preaches the RA gospel to future librarians. Her missionary work includes writing numerous articles on RA, speaking frequently about it at library conferences, and writing Research-Based Readers' Advisory (ALA, 2008).
Marcia Mardis - Wayne State University
Push Technology
As assistant professor in Wayne State's school library media program, Mardis constantly encourages school librarians to show teachers how new technologies—even personal entertainment devices—can enhance student learning. She's worked with the Michigan Education Resources Digital Library and National Science Digital Library to disseminate high-quality digital resources among school librarians and teachers.
David Rothman - Community General Hospital
Direct Effects
Rothman has an equally direct effect on the lives of busy librarians as cocreator of LibWorm, which searches over 1500 library-related RSS feeds (from blogs to journal tables of contents). Since LibWorm lets users set up custom RSS feeds to track topics of interest, it helps them manage information overload. Two of his greatest contributions to the medical field are his “enthusiasm and generosity.”
Mark Greek - District of Columbia Public Library
Restoring History
As photo archivist for the DCPL's Washingtoniana Division at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the city's main, Mark Greek restores historical photos from the ravages of time and invisibility by constructing a database of holdings, writing finding aids, producing exhibits, and adding new images to the collection.
Lisa Sweeney - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Translator
Every day, Sweeney helps sophisticated researchers and amateurs alike use geospatial data to study how cybercommunities are created, air quality is monitored, and models of global change are built. [Reference coordinator and public services librarian Heather] McCann sees in Sweeney's efforts a combination of the fundamentals of librarianship—“collecting, describing, and providing access to data,” she says—and the advanced technological skill of “loading nonrestricted geospatial data in usable form to an online repository with Federal Geographic Data Committee metadata.”
Mark Vrabel - Oncology Nursing Society
Show Me the Evidence
Anne Snively, director of periodicals publishing at the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), says Vrabel, the society's information resources supervisor, supports ONS evidence-based practice initiatives by keeping nurses apprised of research on best practices in clinical treatment of cancer patients. He not only assists society members with their own research, but he writes articles for clinical practice journals himself.
Mario Ascencio - George Mason University Libraries
Anger into Fuel
As a 17-year-old library page, Ascencio once helped a timid, illiterate Latina get her library card. The experience made him realize the extent to which libraries could affect the disadvantaged, and from that moment on, he resolved to become a librarian. Now, as visual arts liaison librarian at George Mason University Libraries, he's also one of the few Latino professionals on campus. A past beneficiary of REFORMA sponsorships, he makes a point of mentoring the university's minority students and supports its Spanish-speaking MLS students' attendance at REFORMA conferences.
Robin Kear - University of Pittsburgh
Global Thinker
Robin Kear loves both librarianship and travel and puts both loves to good use. During an internship at the UN HABITAT Agency in Nairobi, Kenya, Kear taught library staff to use electronic databases, helped produce a CD-ROM publication on water and sanitation issues for the 2003 World Water Forum, and learned the difficulties of librarianship in countries lacking adequate communication infrastructures.
Annabelle Núñez - University of Arizona
Life Work
Annabelle V. Núñez became passionate about health issues when her mother's chronic illness made her understand the cultural and financial barriers to good health and preventive care among Hispanics. Now, in her daily work at the Arizona Health Sciences Library and in frequent conference presentations, Núñez helps medical professionals, community leaders, and librarians understand those barriers “so they can work very hard to close that gap.”
Alex Youngberg - Vancouver Public Library
On the Line
Alex Youngberg, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 391, is an activist on many community issues, but the three-month strike she led against the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) exemplifies her belief that issues must come not from leaders but from the ground up.
Joshua Ferraro - LibLime
Open Source Evangelist
“No one in the library profession has served as a greater evangelist for open source software than Josh Ferraro,” says Carl Grant, president of CARE Affiliates, Blacksburg, VA, and one of his many admirers both inside and outside of the Ohio library community. Ferraro was systems administrator for the Nelsonville Public Library, OH, when it became the nation's first library to switch to an open source ILS (Koha, on Labor Day 2003). In promoting open source to other libraries, however, Ferraro says he found most didn't have access to “internal support staff who would enable them to deploy something as complex as an ILS without help from a commercial vendor.” So, in 2005, he cofounded LibLime and thus helped bridge the gap.
Jennifer Nelson - Minneapolis Public Library
Leveling the Field
Jennifer Nelson puts together programs, she says, that help solve “some of the inequities we see in our community.” As partnerships coordinator for digital inclusion at the Minneapolis Public Library, she collaborated with the Neighborhood Development Center to develop the Micro Entrepreneur Resource Center (www.mercmpl.org) and then make it more widely accessible by raising money to get its Business Plan Builder translated into Somali and Spanish.
Daniel Cornwall - Alaska State Library
On a Mission
...Cornwall works with the American Library Association's Government Documents Round Table to increase public awareness of what's available. Because he is concerned about the future readability of digital documents, he led the Alaska State Library to adopt LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology for preservation.
Padma Polepeddi - Glendale Library
Passion for Diversity
Now supervisor of the Glendale Library, Polepeddi builds collections and programming for a diverse community and buttonholes new immigrants to tell them, “All this is free!” Though her branch is known for its extensive Russian and Spanish-language collections, Polepeddi has expanded its diversity program, improving services to other nationalities, teens, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Amanda McKeraghan - Sevens County Rural Library District
Rural Improvement
Having worked her way up in the Stevens County Rural Library District (SCRLD) from bookmobile driver to branch manager to director, now she knows it's true: her eight small libraries serve 40,000 people, including an active Russian and Ukrainian community. They range from 4800 square feet down to a station inside a general store—and have an outsize impact in towns without “trendy bars, Internet cafés, youth centers, or other places that people gather after school and work.” Whitney Edwards, manager of Colville Public Library, a branch of SCRLD, says that because of McKeraghan's work, “people in Stevens County view their libraries as their community hubs, their reference source, their connection to the Internet, their bus stop, their office, their living room even.”
Mary Ellen Stasek - Lakewood Public Library
Community Ambassador
Lakewood Public Library director Kenneth Warren is justly proud of the “smartly designed, deeply conceived, and community-connected web site” that Mary Ellen Stasek created for the library (lkwdpl.org). From the beginning, lkwdpl.org has been about the library and the neighborhood, because Stasek realized how wide an audience it would attract: prospective residents and business owners, genealogists, students doing school assignments, parents, homeowners, and more.
Jennifer Schember - Las Vegas - Clark County Library District
On the Same Page
Of German-Japanese descent, Schember relishes her opportunity as community outreach and adult programming coordinator to honor Clark County's many ethnic and cultural groups. Deputy Director Robb Morss says she's “developed productive partnerships with each of the community's ethnic chambers” and dramatically increased Heritage Month programming, with additional Heritage months honoring the county's Asian Pacific Americans and Native Americans, seniors, and GLBTs.
Amy Buckland - Library Student Journal
Do Something!
When Library Student Journal's (LSJ) founding editor, Eli Guinnee, left, Buckland became editor. She argued in her first issue that LIS students “understand the average user better than many practicing librarians” and “see information needs in new places (and new worlds).”
Guinnee says Buckland has moved into those new worlds, creating a Facebook group for LIS students, an Editors's Blog that's “an important place for LIS students to discuss developments in the field; and LSJ's virtual office in Second Life, where she's also a reference librarian.”
Kim Ricker - University of Maryland Libraries
Data Tracker
In three years, she's taught more than 2500 people to use GIS, managed hardware and software upgrades, surveyed campus GIS needs, and helped faculty use geospatial data to research topics like low-income families' access to dentists who accept Medicaid. One satisfied professor praises her “keen understanding of faculty needs.”
Alexia Hudson - Penn State Great Valley
A Blended Passion
...She “helps students reenvision libraries as a place for continuous professional development with emerging technologies.” Hudson focuses on graduate student orientation, training, and developing the virtual campus in the Second Life Penn State Virtual Worlds project. Her involvement in immersive environments helps libraries “maintain relevance in a highly technical global landscape” and demonstrates her “originality and inventiveness…to promote library services in both the real and virtual world,” says Susan Ware, reference librarian at Penn State Brandywine.
Tony Tallent - Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Count
Razzle Dazzler
Tony Tallent is an unparalleled generator of ideas. As director of youth and outreach services for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), he rocks the library, literally. Director Charles Brown says Tallent initiated PLCMC's “first ever rocking music series for young children and their parents,” the enthusiastically received Tricycle Music Fest hyped as “Three months. Three Bands. Three Ways To Rock at the Library.”
Penny Sympson - Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates
Creating Customers
Penny Sympson knew when she was hired as corporate librarian for Wiss, Janney, Elstner (WJE) Associates that the firm was considering outsourcing the library. She found that challenge irresistible—and met it. Now WJE's professionals rank their satisfaction with her library as 6.59 out of a possible 7, and the company's president brags that once he “called Penny for a book, and by the time I hung up the phone, she was standing at my door with the item.”
Stephanie Squicciarini - Fairport Public Library
Action Figure
Squicciarini chose to work with teens “because they are so worth it,” but she wanted to do something special for them: she launched the Greater Rochester Teen Book Festival (www.teenbookfestival.org). She organized local librarians and media specialists, and together they lined up the funding, location, and a slew of popular authors. Now entering its third year, the festival has become wildly successful (1000-plus attendance in 2007, double that of year one).
Devo Carpenter - Austin Public Library
Not Clowning Around
Many people know Devona Carpenter as a storyteller at the Austin Public Library. Some know her from her spare-time roles as “Devo the Clown” or as the puppeteer who staged a two-minute production of The Wizard of Oz, complete with tornado, wicked witches, and flying monkeys. But to teens at Austin's Gardner-Betts Juvenile Justice Center, she's the woman who changed their lives, bringing them books and treating them like people with a future.
Karen Brooks-Reese - Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Better Than Cool
Brooks-Reese helps teens expand their skills and gain the respect of their peers. She helps them turn their program ideas into reality. Together, they've created a slew of programs, including Tell-a-Tale Theater (teens bring popular children's books and activities to children at CLP branches); a video contest for teen-designed ads promoting the library; and Behind the Book: Authors Talk to Teens. “I feel that teens will have a greater appreciation of literature if they are directly exposed to those who create it,” she says.
Alison Cody - Loyola Notre Dame Library
Working the Crossroads
Cindy Fisher, one of numerous grateful fellow students at Simmons, called Alison Cody “the glue holding many Simmons GSLIS programs together,” because, as lead technology reference assistant (TRA), Cody helped students and faculty alike with computer problems and created a training manual and wiki for new TRAs. Seeing that fellow students wanted to understand new technologies better, Cody also created and promoted workshops on topics like social software, screencasting, tagging, and more. She even taught them how to run a technology workshop—perhaps so they could replace her.
Lucía González - Broward County Library
Storyteller
Through her programs at the Imagination Factory (an MDPLS program promoting reading through storytelling), she encouraged Hispanic children to read and their parents to read to them. Now with the Broward County Library, she's developed bilingual children's story times for libraries, public schools, and daycare centers throughout the county. Her efforts to expand the library's Dia de Los Niños/El Dia de Los Libros (Children's Day/Book Day) helped the library win the prestigious Mora Award for 2007.
Jamie Watson - Harford County Public Library
Spark Plug
Nationally known for her leadership in YALSA, particularly on its Quick Picks Committee, she also works with Maryland library groups to identify teens' favorite books and moderates book discussions for teens 14 and up (www.capitolchoices.org). Her blog, The Mashup: A Blog About Books for Teens, is part of her contribution to public television station WETA's “All About Adolescent Literacy” web site (www.adlit.org).
Peter Bromberg - South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative
Transformer
Bromberg's day-to-day work is transforming librarians. He delivers what Rider University librarian Robert Lackie calls “state-of-the-art technology training programs and staff development opportunities for SJRLC's 630 member libraries.” He coaches librarians as they move into leadership positions and shares best practices on blogs, wikis, electronic discussion lists, and chat.
Sarah Erwin & Candice Gwin - Kirkwood Public Library
Team Effort
Though Sarah Erwin (l.) and Candice Gwin are young (28 and 27, respectively) and new on the job, Wicky Sleight, Kirkwood Public Library (KPL) director, attributes KPL's winning tax referendum and its 2007 Missouri Library of the Year award largely to their “work ethic, programming ideas, and service philosophy.”
Sol Gómez - Pima County Public Library
Paying It Forward
Sol Gómez was a construction worker when he entered the University of Arizona's (UA) Knowledge River program, which trains librarians to serve Hispanic and Native American communities. Now, as a branch manager at the Pima County Public Library (PCPL), his raw materials are young minds, and what they're building is a better future.
Kim Fuller - District of Columbia Public Library
On Time, on Budget
With just a $20,000 grant from Idearc Media, 88 Idearc employee volunteers, a few contractors, and staff, Fuller brought the project [the makeover of the Black Studies Center at the city's main library] in, on time and on budget. She also met the other goal, that the makeover of this DCPL crown jewel, a special collection not renovated since the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library opened in 1972, make the same impact as Southeast's renovation. Fuller opened up the space, improved the lighting, created a zone for quiet study, added vibrant color, and installed end-of-stack larger-than-life-size photos of African American heroes.
Lisa Wells - Moore Public Library
Cowgirl
Within months of being hired, Wells convinced city leaders to fund both a library renovation and the branch's adoption of RFID as a pilot for the system. She says city officials joke that “if it costs money, it's one of Lisa's ideas!” But she made that investmentpay off: 46,000 of Moore's 50,000 residents have library cards, over 3000 students participate in summer reading programs, and more than 700 people take part in library literacy programs. Wells partnered with a local Baptist college to provide math and science tutoring and with arts agencies to provide summer concerts.
Congratulations, everyone!!
Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill for this blog post title (and for, along with Cindi Trainor, egging me on to do this), and to David Rothman for the magazine cover image which I couldn't find anywhere on the LJ website.
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