“Jenn just has a knack for writing conference proposals. That’s the only think I can think of” is what most people say when asked about Jenn Kelley’s almost constant presence on conference, workshop and institute programs. “I think it has something to do with her MFA. She’s using language or something to persuade people that she’s got good ideas.”

And she’s got good ideas in abundance! Or at least one good idea that she can repurpose and talk about for hours on end: Library Secrets, the information literacy tips, tricks and hints program she’s running over at the College of DuPage Library, in Glen Ellyn, IL. The program has become a marketing juggernaut, with nearly 100 Facebook fans, almost 800 Twitter followers and at least 30 people expressing interest in learning more at her recent ACRL poster session.

Jenn’s poster session focused on the social software tools and other marketing outlets that she’s used to promote Library Secrets. In addition to the aforementioned Web 2.0 applications, Jenn has also been promoting Library Secrets to any captive audience she can find, including, but not limited to, sharing links during other peoples’ webinars and tweeting endlessly about the program during conferences.

Although Jenn’s Library Secrets program has found success with other librarians in the U.S. and in Canada, she will not stop promoting it until it’s reached her intended audience: the students. “It’s really cool that other librarians like what I’m doing,” Jenn said in a recent Twitter rant, “but I kinda want the students to pay attention, too.”

An admirable sentiment, Jenn! Keep up the vigorous self-promotion!

After spending my early years working in both school and public libraries, I went away from my first love for 20 years (finances, you know). When I returned, I found that my “librarian’s heart” was still active and that I wanted to support librarians as well as teachers, parents, anyone who loved literacy and wanted children to learn to do the same.

Voila! Now I get to spend my days (and some nights) talking virtually and literally with families, teachers, children, librarians, social service and nonprofit groups about the power of literacy. My messages are simple:

Reading and writing are tools for life!
We cannot forget motivation in the role of children (and adults) becoming great readers.
Don’t forget the fun!
Keep our end result in mind (or as Elizabeth Drew says) – “The essence of literature is, I suppose, whether we live more intensely for the reading of it”.

Help me spread the news by touching one family, one child, one adult with the marvelous gift of literacy.

Darren Chase arrived at the library a number of years ago and continues to be there, doing something with his hands, hiding his heart in his smile. Don’t you wish you were him? Don’t you wish he was like all of us? But in some ways he is like us –or at least me– because I am sometimes him.

Darren’s story is about a librarian. He gets this award for the way his story is being told. Don’t ask how it ends. He is proud of that part in the story where he helps that researcher with her question about big pharma biopiracy, indigenous Amazonian shamans, and sustainable development.
Indeed, some consider this award a testament to the tension between what is and what we wish. But there it goes, slouching, bleeding money out the eyes, and there isn’t anything we can do about that.

Sarah Mae Harper is a Teen & Children’s Services Librarian with the County of Los Angeles Public Library. She has been a Librarian for over 5 years but this year has been a banner one for her. She has successfully increased the numbers and service hours of teen volunteers at her community library without boring them…too much, served her second year on the Summer Reading Program committee and has also had the privilege of serving on the 2009 Beatty Award Committee. She is honored to be a Shover and Maker for 2009 and hopes She can live up to the name.

To be included in such esteemed company is truly an honor.

I am the Electronic Services Librarian at The Catholic University of America. I mostly work in the realm of web services, but also dabble in reference, instruction and collection development. What this really means is that I MAKE the most of limited resources to try and serve our students and faculty in a manner appropriate to the 21st century. This involves some fearless experimentation, a joy of tinkering, and an appreciation for open source technologies. There is also a fair amount of SHOVING going on, but mostly in a quiet-like-a-ninja way. That’s right, I’m so l33t I will 2.0-ify your services before you know what happened. In the words of my former manager at Burger King, “That Jonathan is a quiet one. Better keep an eye on him.”

You can find me just about anywhere on the web using various aliases. The best places to track my stealthy shoving & making skillz right now are http://www.twitter.com/l1br4r14n and http://friendfeed.com/l1br4r14n

Marianne Reddin Aldrich, Circulation Services Coordinator at Tutt Library, Colorado College, was unavailable for comment this evening due to inclement weather having left her as the sole person above the age of 30 in a building full of blizzard-buzzed bibliophiles. However, sources close to the award winner mused, “Hmm, someone must have gotten wind of her upcoming library blog post featuring zombie haiku.” Or perhaps it is her tireless work SHOVING books onto carts and MAKING room on the student worker schedule to accommodate yet another last minute change in plans. In any event, we are sure that when she emerges from the snowdrifts, she will be delighted to hear the news!

When I was first told I had made the Shavers and Bakers I immediately whipped up a pan of brownies, put them in the oven for 35 minutes at 35o degrees, put a fresh 3 blade on my Gillette Mach3, and gave myself a nice clean shave.

There’s nothing like eating a brownie fresh out of the oven knowing that your face is smooth as a baby’s bott…

What? Shovers and Makers? Oh, I though this was Shavers and Bakers. Uh, never mind.

I, Jessy Randall, am pleased to be chosen for a Shovers and Makers Award, but I must refuse the honor on moral grounds.

Yes, it’s true that I put massive amounts of text online for Special Collections at Colorado College, thus breaking the (inane) rules of Dreamweaver (re. how much you can copy/paste) and helping researchers all over the world find unusual materials in our collections (thereby tripling my workload).

Yes, it’s true I put together a fabulous library-themed issue of the online poetry magazine Snakeskin.

Nevertheless, I cannot accept this award, because it has come to my attention that the judge, Jessy Randall, was inordinately biased. She should have recused herself from judging on the grounds that she is I. How this was ever allowed to happen I do not know, but I believe it shows a profound flaw (or possibly strength) in the Shovers and Makers philosophy.

My name is Amelia Luzzi, and I manage the web content for student support at a UK university. Since “student support” covers 15 websites over 9 departments, and each department has its own idiosyncratic approach to site content, a better description of my job is: I herd cats. And I blog about it when I have the time.

My days are mostly spent educating staff members about websites and online tools; anything from training staff on wikis to persuading directors to mention the website in their plans for the service. Yesterday I showed Google Calendar to a colleague as a way of putting together a cross-university Fresher’s calendar. A week ago I presented a service-wide web strategy to our senior managers. Today I produced one-page guidelines on writing for the web in response to a staff request. I’ve only been here six months, but I can see people’s attitude towards the web change from “I don’t get it” to “oh, look, I can do it, and it’s useful”.

Being a librarian by trade and training stands me in good stead now. The look of the site isn’t under my department’s control (there’s a University-wide template for pages) so I help people focus on improving the quality and relevance of their content. As an information professional I have the expertise and tools to do that.

I also carry over from my library days the idea that students (or other end-users) are really important, and we should probably make our websites useful to them. Even small projects – persuading departments to let students sign up for workshops online – have had tremendously positive response from students.

I put work hard at advocating the web as a great way of connecting with students. I am proud of the results I achieve with even simple projects, and prouder still that I communicate my enthusiasm for the web to other staff, who are beginning to develop their own ideas. This is what being a Shover and Maker means to me – not just doing stuff, but pushing other people to try it for themselves.

Talk about shovers and makers, Astrid always does the shoving to keep me moving when it comes to our blog “PDL’s Public Displays of Law Library Books“.  My name is Rosemary LaSala and I am the Reference/Government Collections Librarian at the Rittenberg Law Library, St. John’s University School of Law. In addition to creating displays for the Depository Collections I manage the Federal, New York State and United Nations Collections. By performing the cataloging of these documents I shove the information about the Depository Collections to the faculty, administration, students, fellow librarians and staff so as to inform them about the importance of Depository status and what can be found at our library. I also manage the Law Libraries Micro Form Collection. I am part of the reference team at the library as well as one of the librarians that conduct instructional tours of the library for undergraduate and law students with an emphasis on Legal Research.