My name is Ahniwa Ferrari. Technically, I’m the Online Resources Consultant at the Washington State Library. It’s one of the more vague job titles I’ve ever run across, but on the plus side both the title and the job allow me a fair bit of leeway to define my own responsibilities. Mainly, I am the project coordinator for Ask-WA, the Washington Statewide Virtual Reference Cooperative.

I’ve been out of grad school for nearly a year now (and working as the above for that time), and there’s a lot I’m proud to have accomplished. Ask-WA grew from just 24 participating libraries at the beginning of 2008 to 60 participating libraries today. Virtual reference service is becoming ubiquitous in Washington libraries, including complete buy-in from the State’s community and technical college libraries. By selling libraries on the service, not on the technology, buy-in has been high, the service continues to expand, and patrons have been thrilled to find their libraries offering 24/7 virtual reference.

In addition to coordinating Ask-WA, I’ve changed the format of Statewide Database Trials in Washington State to be much more helpful to libraries. Instead of large trials where too many products were available, we have implemented limited, subject-tailored trials at two-month intervals. For instance, for the March-April period, we are offering statewide trials of Mango Languages and Auralog’s Tell Me More. To counterpoint the paid products, I decided to search out and offer free language-learning products through the trials as well, to help libraries determine if the money they were considering spending was worth the price, or if a free product might suffice.

My final point of pride is my ongoing work with our Hard Times response. To date, I’ve compiled an excellent list of job-searching and economic resources. The plan is to grow this list to include other subjects: housing, health, etc, and to provide the links through a more navigable portal page.

Oh, and I also played a large role in bringing our program into the blogging age.

I’d like to think I’ve done less shoving and more making: making libraries realize the benefits of virtual reference; making database trials more useful; making resistant librarians blog; and making resources available to library users and staff in these tough times. But each of these things, in turn, required their own fair amount of shoving.

How much shoving? Well, a gentleman librarian never tells. As for the second “S” in the title, if you want to know, you’ll have to ask.