January 31st, 2009, 12:15 PM (grab lunch quick and bring it)
Cramer Hall, room 171 (or whatever PSU classroom LI804 is in)

SLIM-OR SCALA is proud to announce Jennifer Railsback Klump as our next lunchtime speaker. Jennifer (an Emporia grad) is the “Education Resource Advisor” at the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory (NWREL). NWREL is one of a network of regional education laboratories created in the early 1960s as a federally funded link between research and development efforts in education and school districts. Jennifer’s job is to provide reference service to educators, researchers and the general public on current educational issues, research, policy, or practice.

I hope people will be able to make it to talk to Jennifer. She has an fascinating job (once again demonstrating the wide range of contexts that librarians work in) and will be able to provide an interesting perspective on both reference work and our educational system.

by Monique Lloyd

I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to attend the Society of American Archivists 2008 Annual Conference, Archival R/Evolution and Identities , held August 26-30 in San Francisco . Many of the sessions I attended focused on the issues of diversity, technology, and ethics. One session, chaired by John Fleckner, past president of SAA , and author of Native American Archives: An Introduction , discussed core values, professional identity, and the spiritual impact of what archivists do. I also attended sessions on the impact of technology on ethics; one which examined the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials from different perspectives, and another on archival ethics and social justice. Some of the section and roundtable meetings I attended included College and University Archives, Archives and Archivists of Color, and Native American Archivists. I will be writing more about my impressions about these sessions and meetings on my blog in the coming weeks.

In between attending sessions and meetings, I took full advantage of the services offered by the Career Center, met with Mary Jo Pugh, editor of the American Archivist, to discuss several ideas for possible journal articles, and attended poster sessions. It was delightful to reconnect with people I’d met at conferences I’d previously attended in Baltimore, Albuquerque, and Anchorage, as well as having the opportunity to meet many new people from around the United States. One especially fun evening was spent watching “Archives in the Movies”, a program by Leith Johnson showing 24 film clips showing how archivists were and are portrayed in movies from the 1920’s to the present.

I also took some time to explore San Francisco. I saw dozens of beautifully and intricately carved ivory Japanese figurines in an antique store window display. I also explored several art galleries; my favorite was the Weinstein Gallery which features the work of Marc Chagall. I spent several hours wandering through Britex Fabrics, four stories (!) of fabrics of all kinds–cottons, wools, silks, brocades, lace– trims, ribbons, accessories as well as a collection of over 30,000 different buttons.

I stopped and listened to street musicians and singers, heard people speaking (and sometimes arguing) in languages I didn’t recognize, and generally reveled in the chaos of the crowded streets with tourists (like me!) stopping to take photographs, locals walking quickly as they smoked their cigarettes, police walking, in cars, and on bikes, panhandlers asking for change, a few people who seemed as though they might be both homeless and mentally ill, women beautifully and elegantly dressed in high heels, and construction workers who took the time to look at them appreciatively.

A personal highlight was attending the Awards Ceremony and being acknowledged as one of two recipients of the 2008 Howard T. Pinkett Minority Student Award . This award “recognizes minority graduate students who manifest an interest in becoming professional archivists and active members of SAA, and do so through scholastic achievement”. The award provided full complimentary registration to the SAA Annual Meeting, as well as related expenses for hotel and travel for attending the SAA Annual Meeting. I was honored to be presented this award and would like to publicly thank Erika Castano, Curator for the Oregon Multicultural Archives at Oregon State University; Tiah Edmunson-Morton, Reference Archivist, Oregon State University and my workplace mentor, and Mary Jo Pugh for nominating me for this award.

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Emily Ford, OHSU Oregon Health Go Local Project Manager (an MLS librarian), visited SLIM-OR students this past weekend. Oregon Health Go Local (http://www.ohsu.edu/library/golocal/) will be an on-line directory of health related services for the entire state of Oregon. It will be searchable by health condition and integrated with the Medline Plus database. This unique project requires Emily Ford to take on many roles. She has successfully synthesized her outreach, management and technical skills to land as the project manager. It was interesting and informative to hear about Emily’s path to this position and how she hopes to grow this project into a vital community resource. For more information on the project and how to get involved please review the brochure and volunteer job description.

Also a SLIM-OR alumni, Todd Hannon, is the principle investigator of this project. It will be exciting to see this project go live!

For our next brown bag lunch speaker we are pleased to welcome Emily Ford, the Oregon Health Go Local Project Manager. This project is being coordinated by the Oregon Health & Science University Library. Emily Ford is an MLS librarian and you may have seen her in the Oregon Health Go Local project booth at the recent
OLA/WLA conference.

“Oregon Health Go Local will be an online directory of health services and providers throughout the state. As
part of MedlinePlus Go Local, the Oregon Health Go Local database will be integrated with the National
Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus database. From MedlinePlus health topics pages users will be able to
find health services and providers in Oregon based on specific health topics.”

Come learn more about this grant funded project. Emily Ford will speak about what the project is, why
it is being done and how you can become involved as a volunteer. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a local librarian and learn about a truly unique and exciting project.

When: Saturday June, 21st 12:15pm
Where: Cramer Hall Room 250 on the PSU campus

See you there!

For those of you who weren’t able to attend today’s wonderful talk by Pam Osbourne, here is the audio:

Pam, the former digital librarian at Mercy Corps (now the Manager of Intranet Services) spoke about the process of designing and setting up the digital library and other digital information sharing systems at Mercy Corps. She has been a librarian in school libraries, public libraries and academic libraries talked about how her past experience as a more traditional librarian applies in the digital realm.

Audio download and more streaming options here.

Thanks ever so much to Rachel Bridgewater for talking to us last weekend. I have uploaded a recording of the talk for those of you who weren’t able to attend.

More download and streaming options here.

Many thanks to John Webb for his talk last weekend. for those of you who couldn’t make it, here are some answers to questions he prepared for the talk, as well as his Powerpoint.

• Powerpoint Presentation
• Q&A (Word document)

Rachel Bridgewater (Oregon 4) will present a SirsiDynix Institute
seminar entitled “A Little More Help from Your Friends: Social Bookmarking” on November 13, at 8 am. These seminars are free, but you do need to register. They will also be available afterwards free of charge, at your convenience, on the SirsiDynix Institute website.

Here is a description of her presentation:

Is there a better way to bookmark? This question has inspired many of us to turn to social bookmarking as a method of keeping track of favorite websites. But if we’re having a hard time keeping track of our own information, can adding a social element possibly help the situation? And aren’t tags just a messier way of organizing information? Whether “folksonomy” is Greek to you or you’ve been tagging your bookmarks in del.icio.us since back in the day, this session will deliver insight into the broad concepts involved with social classification as well as examining nuts-and-bolts practical applications.