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.

I’m the Web Services librarian for Western Libraries at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. The biggest problem with my job title is that nobody knows what it means, so I have to explain it to everybody. The good part is that because nobody knows what it means, I can pretty much claim anything web-related as part of my mandate (except the catalogue; that’s definitely somebody else’s job).

I was part of the team that designed and developed the current Western Libraries website, which launched last summer, and I’m now the coordinator for ongoing maintenance and new web projects. This mostly means that I spend a lot of time going to meetings.

When I’m not working on the website at Western, I develop software for the Evergreen Open ILS project. Three years ago, I wrote the ILS module that talks to self-check terminals and PC login systems. Right now I’m working on the module that reads MARC format holdings information uses it to predict when journal issues should arrive.

I’d like to thank the acade… myself for this wonderful award and will definitely be framing the certificate and hanging it on my wall. (There is a certificate, right?)

I am the first Online Services Librarian in the history of the The San Diego Mesa College Library. I have launched our 24/7 reference service and I administer it’s daily upkeep. Our website redesign is slated for launch this summer and we will be including an IM reference chat widget to our Ask A Librarian component. I am also including screencast tutorials with closed captioning in the website so that we can begin our distance education teaching of information literacy. I have embedded myself in a few online English classes (to my knowledge, not done before at my institution), I have given special faculty training on del.icio.us and databases and weeded the technology section of our monograph collection for perhaps the first time in the history of our library (I had previously thought books on Y2K were old!).

On the side I am a full time doctoral student with Pepperdine University in Education Technology and have just begun my first term of the dissertation. I also have a blog at The Animated Librarian where I muse about tech and library issues. As I hop on my Harley and ride off to do my kickboxing training I will graciously accept this award on behalf of me. Yeah me!

As a young child, Katie Dunneback was routinely encouraged not to be a shover by her librarian mother. The chorus of her siblings echoed the somewhat-frequent entreaties. The lure to be a maker of things, however, was one she could not resist.

In college, long before she ever considered following in her mother’s and great-aunt’s librarian footsteps, she created her own lending library and readers’ advisory service for popular materials out of her dorm room. Unfortunately this led to a number of dormmates assigning her a number of colorful epithets, especially during finals weeks, one of which has stuck to this day.

In the field librarianship, Katie is a maker of connections. Her mind often works in mysterious ways and is used to hearing others say “What were you thinking?” Her first foray into the larger field was with her Young Librarian blog where she presented the somewhat humorous essay “Weblogs as Libraries”. Over five years later she has amassed a number of LIS writing credits, though the blog has gone on indefinite hiatus.

A number of those credits are in the topic of readers’ advisory. Katie’s lifelong addiction to reading (she does display a number of troubling addiction-related habits and has resisted all attempts at intervention to date) has stood her in good stead as she is routinely consulted on readers’ advisory issues, especially romance-related, by her peers. She served on the inaugural committee of the Reading List Council, and is still amazed by the opportunity to have worked with some of the most respected librarians in the field. As a way to ease herself out of the intense work of an award committee, she created the Book-A-Month Challenge which ran through all of 2008.

Currently the Consultant with Southeastern Library Services in Bettendorf, Iowa, Katie helps make connections for those she serves by providing continuing education opportunities and technologic issue assistance among other consulting services. Her latest coup is the creating of a simple database using Open Office software to provide libraries of all sizes a way to track Summer Library Program participation and report statistics requested by the State Library of Iowa.

In her free time (ha!), Katie is a published author of fiction under a pseudonym (you have to ask her about it in person) and a knitter. She is also addicted to Twitter (told you she had an addictive personality!).

Katie Dunneback by Cindi Trainor – I & II

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.