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…)

“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!