Hi! I’m Julie Strange! I’m so excited to be among the wonderful people that are the S&M honorees for 2009.

I’m currently enjoying work as the Statewide Coordinator for Maryland AskUsNow!, our virtual reference service. While my ultimate goal is to take over the world with good customer service, creating over funded libraries and a better stereotype for libraries and librarians, I’m happy when our customers are wowed & delighted by the service provided by our friendly, awesome librarians.

Generally, I try to shove myself and others beyond what is “possible,” always taking “no” as just another challenge. I’m solar powered and I have two modes: GO and SLEEP. Sleep is way too tempting so GO is pretty much it. I try to get my hands in everything and try as much as i can; collecting skills and loving learning. I have my motorcycle license so i can pretend to be a bad @$$ librarian. And recently i bought a house so i can pretend to be an adult.

Right now i’m trying to shove myself into drupal so i can learn it and make it do tricks for our new staff support website (because well supported staff makes for happy staff. and happy staff makes for happy customers. and happy customers keep us in business.)

I blog at the strange librarian dot org, a smattering of library stuff and other randomness I’m thinking about, always enjoy a good conversation, and wish i had an unlimited personal technology budget to satisfy my early adopter geekery. but then again, don’t we all?

Hi!

I think I’m tenacious, but others just say pushy, so I guess that makes me a Shover, and I try to Make opportunities for collaboration and information sharing wherever I can.

Me, in a lightning and hail storm, 100' vertical from the top of Mt. Sneffels - about to realize there's no way the dogs can make it to the top.

This year I help put on BCR‘s Reference Renaissance conference, and started a blog for public libraries, The Librarian is IN. I was a reference librarian and head of adult services at a public library branch for many years and can’t think of much more satisfying than to work with or in public libraries (no offense all you academic and special librarians out there).

I’m a huge fan of not reinventing the wheel, so love it that librarians are so willing to let you steal their best ideas – we used that philosophy when we worked with the Colorado State Library to help create AskColorado, a sucessful, long-lived, statewide 24/7 virtual reference service.

When I’m not at work or reading books or watching DVDs I’ve
checked out of public libraries, you’ll find me hiking in the mountains with my husband and dogs.

Sada Bihari Sahu.
I am working as Manager(Library) in Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.I have been in this profession for more than 17 years and having experience of Academic, Public and Special Libraries in India. I am also attached to teaching field of Library Science and working as Academic Counsellor for various courses (BLISc & MLISc)in Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, India. Last two years, I have published more than 15 articles in the field of Library Science, Banking and Hindi and Oriya literature. Completed my Ph.D work in Library Science and going to submit the thesis to Sambalpur Unviersity in the end of April 2009. Got several prizes in Inter-Banking competition in Hindi. Attached to various national and international professional organization. Got my JAIIB (Joint Associate of Indian Institute of Banking and Finance) from Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF), Mumbai, India.

Aw shucks, you all are really too kind. I don’t deserve this. Well, maybe I sorta do. So I’m Dave LaCrone y’all and 2008 pretty much rocked my world. I’m going to take this opportunity to brag about it. And Joshua Neff is going to give me that really cool S&M pin.

Speaking of which, I have the privilege of working at a Library on a team of seven (count ‘em, seven!) people who work on web initiatives. I am all too aware of what a rarity that is, even more so when they are all such fabulous co-workers.

This award would not have been possible without them.

I work mostly on a collaborative county historical web site that houses photos, articles and other resources about the history of Johnson County, Kansas. I maintain the site, catalog photos and keep the six partner institutions informed.

In 2008 I added over 20,000 images to the photo database. I wrote and received a $38,000 grant from the county to provide a complete index of cemeteries online to genealogists via the site. I have also nearly completed a complete site redesign which will reveal itself in mere weeks. This year the Library started twittering and I’m very proud to be one of the folks behind the scenes there. Of course, the uninhibited me is also on twitter.

I’ve also provided a number of public presentations about JoCoHistory and served as a resource for people looking to develop similar sites.

It’s been a productive and fun year. I hope to be a more active blogger this year and hopefully do a little more networking with like-minded librarians. Yay!

Librarian Barbara Fister, who is unsure whether to use third or first person here but has decided against the royal “we,” has worked at Gustavus Adolphus College long enough to finally learn how to spell it. She likes the title “Curmudgeon at Large” but instead settles for Academic Librarian and, for the nonce, Department Chair, which at her library is musical. (She recommends it as a healthy alternative to the usual way libraries are organized.)

After many years practicing her skills at annoying members of Collib-L, where she has long been known as “God, not that woman again,” she now makes trouble at ACRLog. She likes to write, from articles to fiction, an activity which is also known as “beats working.”

Jacqueline completed her MLIS degree in June of 2008, at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Student work at McGill led to a pretty nice summer job post-graduation, where she wrote pretty much all the text (including metadata) on this website. Then she threw it all away for love (awww!) and moved to Spain.

After an extended, six-month “vacation” wherein she learned a third language, learned English all over again, and got married, she is preparing to shove her way into some kind of library work in Spain, which is a scarier proposition than you could ever imagine, institutionalized siestas notwithstanding.

Despite putting on a brave face, she is terrified that she will never work in her field again. You can see her blog here and her website with CV and links and other stuff here.

You can offer words of encouragement in the comments for this post.

Less than a week after my self-selection as a 2009 Shover & Maker, I found out just how recognizable we are when we announce our own awesomeness!

Stopping at a local restaurant to for dinner, a man and his son entered the store. He glanced at me, then looked at the shirt a little closer and said “My wife has that shirt!”. Turns out, his wife is our fellow S&M awardee, Ruth Kneale. I’ve met Ruth before, but not her husband or son. And I certainly wouldn’t have expected to meet them without her around!

So go ahead and declare yourself a Shover & Maker – good things come of it!

Meet the Access & Delivery Services (ADS) librarians at the D.H. Hill Library at NC State University. These individuals are dedicated to providing outstanding customer service to each and every person who enters the library physically or virtually. They value the user experience and work closely with their staff to improve procedures, policies and workflow. They have also been known to wail pretty hard on Rock Band.

Colleen Harris shoved her way through graduate school and into librarianship as soon as she decided what she wanted to be when she grew up. Preferring to treat librarianship as a smorgasbord of skills, in the 3 years since getting her MLS she’s worked in database management, reference & instruction, and is currently Associate Head of Access & Delivery Services at NCSU. She is currently “shoving and making” her ADS department into a more efficient customer service machine.

I’m Mary Carmen Chimato, Head, ADS, and I steer this crazy ship. My job is to enable Colleen, James and Tripp to do their jobs. I solve problems, keep the crises to a minimum, make sure we laugh at least once a day and make baked ziti and lasagna just like my grandma made. I also bring the cake. I’m proud to call these three my colleagues and friends. They are my managers, my support and my compass when the waters get a bit choppy. I blog over at Circ and Serve and have been known to pose as a cataloger from time to time.

I’m James Harper – NCSU Libraries’ Tripsaver Czar(tm) aka Librarian of D.A.V.E. (Direct Access to Virtually Everything.) I am responsible for interlibrary loan, library material delivery to distance learners and extension personnel, cross campus book delivery, library storage access, fee based document delivery for university and non-university patrons and anything else that seems to fit under the rubric of ‘document delivery’. Achievements, I’ve had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I do what I have to do and see it through with grit and …. Oh look! Chickens!!!….and in the end I do it MY WAY! (apologies to old blue eys.) Check out my Blog I.L.L and Incorrect or don’t. The choice is yours.

Tripp Reade manages academic reserves for a whole mess of people on the NCSU campus. What most pleased him during the past year was nominating his co-worker, Tina Adams, for Library Journal’s 2009 Paraprofessional of the Year award, which she won. To all this, one thing must be added: his expertise in the art and science of the Moon Pie is internationally renowned.

I am Jill Hurst-Wahl and after decades of hard work, I’m honored to be a Shover & Maker! Currently I’m president of my own consulting company, Hurst Associates, Ltd., and a Professor of Practice in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. I have several areas of interest including digitization, copyright, digital libraries, social networking tools and virtual worlds (Second Life). While many people know me from my blogs (Digitization 101 and eNetworking 101: The Blog), I am also a frequent speaker. One thing I am passionate about is getting people jazzed about information and information tools, and I hope that comes through in all the things I do.

In 2008, I celebrated my 10th year of being an independent information professional, having started my business in 1998 after 15 years in the corporate world. Over the course of those 10 years, my business changed from providing competitive intelligence research to corporations to guiding cultural heritage organizations (libraries, museums and archives) in their digitization efforts. In addition, I frequently give presentations and workshops on the use of social networking tools.

Being a person who must keep busy, in 2001 I began teaching at Syracuse University in the School of Information Studies (iSchool) primarily as an adjunct. In 2008, I applied for and was accepted as a full-time Professor of Practice in the iSchool. This move puts me in the classroom (a 3-3 load) and allows me to still do consulting.

Since it is evident that I never sleep, I have plenty of time to teach graduate classes, consulting on projects, speak at conferences, write blog posts, work in my garden, compost, think about how to be environmentally friendly as well as shove and make!

Let me get this straight, right off the bat: even though I am kind of misanthropic in general, I almost never actually shove people. However, I do think I deserve this award, because I am a very good librarian, mainly because I wear glasses and own cats. (Well, I guess the latter statement depends on who you ask, casual observers [and the cats] would probably disagree with who I claim owns who.) And yes, I just nested parentheses in that last sentence, cuz you can do things like that when you’re as bada$$ as I am. Oh, and until I cut my hair recently, I also used to sport a bun on a regular basis, so I think that my perfect execution of the librarian trifecta alone should qualify me for some sort of librarian hall of fame.

Ok, but for realz yo, you can find actual information about me here on my blog, “the info babe” (a title which now kind of annoys me, but I’m kind of stuck with at this point…) Or, if you’re so inclined, you can find me on Twitter, because isn’t that where all the cool kids are these days? Mostly you will see that I’m obsessed with all things social media (and that I complain about things a lot.)

I think the thing I’m most proud in life is that I have found a way to legitimately play around on the internet all day as a career (If my boss asks, it’s because I am an “innovation and digital planning librarian”, and not because I’m obsessed with LOLcats…)