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BRASS Notes

John Gottfried, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

The election results are in—congratulations to our new office holders!
RUSA
-President-Elect – Chris LeBeau
-Director at Large – Jennifer Boettcher

Jennifer was also elected as an ALA Councilor! Jennifer, way to go!!!
BRASS
-Vice Chair/Chair-Elect – Greg Fleming
-Secretary – Ilana Stonebraker
-Member-at-Large – Annette Buckley

We are grateful for your investment of time, energy and effort to BRASS and RUSA…and for making our section and division a great place to serve and grow professionally!

I hope everyone is getting ready for the Annual Conference (AC) in sunny Orlando, FL (Friday, June 24 – Tuesday, June 28, 2016).  BRASS has some great activities, programs, meetings, and, of course, the Monday night BRASS Dinner planned to make for a great conference.

If you have never been to a BRASS Pre Conference BEFORE then try to make this one your FIRST! Business Data for Librarians will be held on that Friday. You can still register in advance and save some money from the on-site registration! I recently registered and I hope to see many of you there.

The RefUSA BRASS Membership Reception will be on Friday night at Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar.

The BRASS Forum (Business Reference in Academic Libraries Committee) on Saturday will feature “Lighting Talks” on a variety of intriguing and innovative topics.

The Sunday morning BRASS Discussion Group will meet, as usual, and this will be an excellent opportunity to learn many new and wonderful things happening in Business Librarianship as well as being informed of recent job openings and other important items.  There will be a coffee and refreshment break sponsored by MINTEL and then feel free to stick-around and meet some of our new colleagues at the BRASS New Business Librarians’ Discussion Group gathering.

The Monday morning BRASS Program will be a great opportunity to learn about the hospitality and tourism industry resource information landscape. I plan to get into the spirit by wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Crocs and shades! Come join the laid-back, enlightening experience!  S&P will be graciously providing coffee, juices and refreshments, as in the past.

Be sure to make your flight reservations to leave on Tuesday and NOT Monday!  You don’t want to bypass the Monday night BRASS Dinner immediately after the BRASS Exec. Committee meeting which will be from 4-6PM. This dinner is a great opportunity to catch-up with colleagues, meet new ones, and network in order to increase your professional capabilities to better serve your patrons back at your libraries.

Take a look at the BRASS website for more details and continue to monitor BRASS-L to keep up with RSVPs for the BRASS Dinner at Cafe Gaugin (first one going out around May 9) and other important scheduling email related to this fantastic upcoming AC!

These are just several of the many happenings—can’t name them all here!—coming up at the AC and I hope you book your reservations accordingly to not miss any of the great things planned!

Best regards and I hope to see you all in Orlando,

Paul Brothers
BRASS Chair 2015-2016

Business Reference Services Discussion Group
The BRASS Discussion Group facilitated a virtual discussion on March 25th. 27 BRASS members were in attendance for this lively discussion about a myriad of topics, including RUSA Voices, the Springshare blog functionality and the new S&P interface. For more details, check ALA connect for the recording and the chat transcript. Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the discussion.  The next virtual discussion will be at 2pm EST on May 13th with an open agenda.

Emily Treptow 2014-2016 Chair

Business Reference in Academic Libraries Committee
For the past 6 months our committee has been actively engaged in preparing for the BRASS Academic Forum that will be held at ALA Annual: “Lightning Talks on Innovation and Risk Taking in Business Academic Librarianship.” We collaborated in many ways—holding virtual meetings, using Google tools, creating a sub-group, and email—to determine criteria, draft messages, solicit presenters and evaluate finalists. Our committee reviewed 24 proposals and selected 7 for the BRASS Academic Forum. Because there were many good proposals that could not fit into the Lightning Talk format, we will sponsor a Lightning Talk webinar after annual to include several more by innovative academic librarians. I look forward to this risky new event for BRASS at ALA Annual!

Van Houlson, 2015-2016 Chair

Business Reference Sources Committee
The Business Reference Sources Committee is in the process of nominating and selecting reference resources that will be reviewed in an upcoming issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly.

The Business Reference Sources Committee has also selected its program to present at the annual Publisher’s Forum which will take place at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando. The title of the forum will be: “One Part Social, One Part Commercial: A Recipe for Supporting Social Entrepreneurship.” The publishers will include Berrett-Koehler, Emerald, and Greenleaf.

Ed Hahn, 2014-2016 Chair

Education Committee
The BRASS Education Committee continues to pursue our goals to provide for the educational needs of business reference librarians and other librarians involved in business reference services. The Committee Teams continue to work on individual projects:

  • Pre Conference Planning Team
    • Work continues on developing the 2016 BRASS Preconference “Business Data for Librarians” at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando June 24 from 8:30am – 4:00pm. Our speakers are working on their individual presentations and the Team will continue to work on logistical details as well as facilitation for the Q&A portion of the event. Advertising for the Pre Conference has met with considerable success and we anticipate a hearty group of participants this year. Join us if you can! (http://brass.libguides.com/2016brasspreconference)
    • The Committee has decided not to offer an in-person Preconference at ALA Annual 2017, instead focusing our efforts on a possible webinar series as an educational offering of similar depth with the benefits of lower cost and increased flexibility to potential participants. Emerald Group Publishing is interested in offering a Preconference at ALA Annual 2017 and the Education Committee will continue our involvement with member Bridget Farrell serving as a liaison (as well as Vendor Relations liaison Ann Fiegen) to this symbiotic venture.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Tom Ottaviano, Peter McKay, Charles Allan and Eimmy Solis.
  • Best of the Best Business Websites Award Team
    • Award winners were announced at Midwinter. The team continues to explore the possibility of changing the award from a print certificate to a web badge; the proposal is pending consideration by the Executive Committee.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Monica Hagan, Cara Cadena and Bridget Farrell.
  • Webinar Team(s)
    • Originally the Committee had two webinar teams – the Free Webinar Team and the Paid Webinar Team. It is likely that the 2016-2017 season will see these teams combined, however, as the Education Committee pursues the possibility of a webinar series offering. This will be discussed along with the report the Paid Webinar team will give at ALA Annual 2016 regarding the results of their environmental review for webinar offerings in the business reference space.
    • The Webinar teams benefit from the efforts of Phebe Dickson, Robbie De Peri and Christina Sheley, Kelly LaVoice, Hiromi Kubo and LuMarie Guth.

The BRASS Education Committee is further pleased to announce that Robbi De Peri has accepted the role of Co-Chair of the Committee for the 2016-2017 term. The Committee welcomes this additional leadership and looks forward to her continuing ideas and insights. The Committee looks forward to ALA Annual 2016 and the year ahead!

Ashley Faulkner, 2012-2015 Chair

Membership Committee
The ReferenceUSA BRASS Member Reception, generously sponsored by InfoUSA, will be held at Cuba Libre Pointe in Orlando at 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on Friday June 24. Pointe Orlando is conveniently located near the Orange County Convention Center and conference hotels.

Don’t miss the opportunity to meet BRASS members and network over appetizers and drinks!

RSVP at http://evite.me/P6PT8wpNEZ

Jennifer Boettcher and Cynthia Slater, 2015-2016 Co-chairs

Vendor Relations Committee
BRASS is fortunate to have sponsors that support the section activities and awards. As annual approaches be sure to thank our long time BRASS friends S&P Global Market Intelligence, Emerald, InfoGroup ReferenceUSA, Morningstar, Global Financial Data, and Springshare. New in the last year are Mergent, the sponsor of the Excellence in Business Librarianship, and SimplyMap, sponsor of the Student Travel Award.

Ann Fiegen, 2015-2016 Chair

AWARD COMMITTEES

BRASS Mergent Excellence in Business Librarianship Award
The BRASS Mergent Excellence in Business Librarianship Award committee is looking forward to officially recognizing this year’s recipient, Jared Hoppenfeld of Texas A&M, at the RUSA Achievement Awards Ceremony during ALA Annual in Orlando. Congratulations, Jared!

Celia Ross, 2014-2015 Chair

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RSS Review

Amy Rustic, Editor

RSS logo
Message from the Chair:

Hi everyone,

I hope you all are having a nice spring.
Amy Rustic, our Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, has been hard at work on committee appointments.  Thank you, Amy, and thank you to all of you who agreed to be committee members or chairs for another term, or for the first time.  Your active participation in our section is very much appreciated.

If you are venturing to Orlando for Annual, I hope you will attend the RSS All Committee Meeting and Open House on Saturday, June 26th from 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. in ROS CENTRE (Rosen Centre Hotel) Salon 09/10.  It’s a great chance to meet fellow and potential RSS members and find out what the difference committees are up to, plus there will be yummy food.

We will be publicizing other RSS session via email and Facebook closer to the conference.

The RSS Election results are in:
VICE-CHAIR/CHAIR-ELECT – Rebecca Jackson
SECRETARY – Jessica Hagman
MEMBER-AT-LARGE – Colleen Seale
Thank you to those who volunteered to run for positions within RSS and Congratulations to the winners!

Crystal Lentz
crystal.lentz@sos.wa.gov
RSS Chair, 2015-16

RSS Honor Roll
It’s that time of year! We want to recognize you and your contributions to RSS!

The RSS Honor Roll gives recognition to active RSS members who have served the section in three different capacities since its inception.

If you have been a member of three or more committees or discussion groups since RSS was established in 2004 and have not previously been added to the honor roll, please send your name and a list of the three ways you have served RSS to Ellen Keith at keith@chicagohistory.org

Not only will you become a member of this esteemed group, you will also be recognized at ALA Annual in Orlando!

Join the RSS Honor Roll today.

RSS COMMITTEE REPORTS

Committee on Multilingual Services
The Committee on Multilingual Library Services is currently reviewing and revising the Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Multilingual Collections and Services http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidemultilingual. The work started this year and will continue into the following year. The sections have been split up evenly amongst the members of the committee, and we are hoping to have some headway on the draft by ALA Annual. Another set of guidelines under the purview of the committee includes the Guidelines for Library Services to Spanish-Speaking Library Users (http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidespanish). The committee initially discussed combining the two guidelines, but have decided to just move forward with the one set and address the other set upon completion of the Multilingual guidelines.

To accompany the guidelines, the committee has discussed creating an online resource guide for library staff that will include strategies, advice, and tools for working with multilingual populations. This goes beyond the somewhat “ideal” guidelines to offer practical resources that can be used or implemented immediately. This work will continue into next year as well.

The committee will be facilitating a discussion forum at ALA Annual on Sunday, June 26th, from 3:00-4:00 pm at the Hyatt, in Bayhill 31 & 32. The discussion forum will be an opportunity for attendees to explain how they use the current guidelines, what they would like to see in the guidelines, and to share practical strategies for best serving multilingual populations in their libraries. The committee is considering compiling discussion notes into a Google Doc and sharing it with conference attendees, which will serve as the basis for the resource guide.

Margaret Bly, Co-Chair 2015-2016
Erin Hvizdak, Co-Chair 2015-2016

Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee
The Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee will be sponsoring a discussion forum at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando on assisting patrons at the point of need through social media. Details are below:
“Please Throw Me a Vine! Assisting Patrons at the Point of Need through Social Media”
Given the large and growing percentage of the American population that is now using social networking sites for communication, it’s likely that your patrons will pose questions and research challenges on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Join us for a discussion on how we can best communicate at this developing point of need.

When: Sunday, June 26, 3:00-4:00 pm
Where: Orange County Convention Center, Room W202A
Lightning Round Presenters:
Using Instagram: Lauren Wallis, University of Delaware
Using Twitter: Paige Alfonzo, University of Denver
Using Vine: Cindy Craig, University of Florida
The Committee’s Selected Bibliography on Point of Need Reference and Instruction is available here: http://connect.ala.org/node/233262

Colleen Seale, Chair 2015-2016

Discovery Services Committee
The Discovery Services Committee plans to hold their Annual Forum titled, “Exploring Engagement between Discovery and the Catalog , 2016 at 3:00 to 4:00 pm, Orange County Convention Center, Room W107. This forum will provide an opportunity to librarians and others who are involved with reference services to discuss what platform they choose to use when engaged in reference services. To learn more about this event visit the ALA Scheduler.

Anne Larrivee, Chair 2015-2016

Education & Professional Development for Reference Committee
“Educating for the Future of Reference” at Annual 2016 in Orlando.
Our panel event for Annual 2016 builds upon earlier discussion forums around the topic of how well (or not) the professional degree prepares us for the current ‘reference’ environment.  “Educating for the Future of Reference” is planned for on Sunday, June 26 from 1:00-2:30, Orange County Convention Center, W104.

The program explores whether ‘reference education’ in library schools currently helps provide librarians with relevant skills and materials for the current ‘reference’ marketplace as seen from the perspective of library administrators/librarians who hire and train, and also from the perspective of library educators.  Panelists include Jason Coleman (Kansas State University), Wendi Bost (Orange County Public Library System), Dr. Linda Lillard (Library Science Dept. at Clarion University), and Dr. Eileen Abels, Dean of the Simmons School of Library and Information Science.

Bryna Coonin, Chair, 2015-2016

Health and Medical Reference Committee
The Health and Medical Reference Committee (HMRC) supports the specialized needs of library staff members who answer health-related reference questions in a variety of settings, including, but not limited to, public libraries, academic libraries, health care institutions, and special libraries. Topics that the committee addresses include legal and ethical issues, resource evaluation, health literacy, cultural differences, library programming, and health reference interview skills. The committee also maintains the Health and Medical Reference Guidelines (http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesmedical), updated last in 2014 and 2015. Finally, this committee manages MEDREF, a health and medicine oriented listserv available to anyone answering health related reference questions.

HMRC has recently been working to promote MEDREF and increase the number of subscribers. The aim of the listserv is to be an open and welcoming environment for library workers from all types of libraries to discuss all questions or issues related to health and medical reference. In the last few months a press release announcing MEDREF have gone to many listservs including RUSA, RSS, ACRL, ALA, MLA and CAPHIS. Subscribe to MEDREF by going to http://lists.ala.org/sympa/info/medref.

HMRC has joined forces with ACRL’s Health Sciences Interest Group (HSIG) in offering a Discussion Forum at ALA in Orlando this June. The forum, entitled Implementing Health and Medical Reference Guidelines: Training librarians, paraprofessionals and part time staff, will highlight how the new Health and Medical Reference Guidelines can best be implemented in any type of library, including how to train professional and non-professional staff regarding what are often sensitive reference questions. This Discussion Forum will take place on Saturday, June 25th at the Hyatt Regency Orlando in Barrel Springs II from 1:00-2:30 pm. We hope all interested in learning more about providing excellent health reference will join us. It promises to be an engaging conversation!

Laura Louise Haines, Chair 2015-2016

Recognition Committee
Join RSS members on Sunday, June 26, 5:00-6:30 PM, in Rosen Centre, Room Grand A, at the RUSA Achievement Awards Ceremony and Reception to recognize Sarah J. Hammill, winner of the RSS Service Achievement Award.

Ellen Keith, Chair 2015-2016

Research and Statistics Committee
Save the Date: 22nd Annual Reference Research Forum ALA Annual Conference
Learn about notable research projects conducted in the broad area of reference services!
Sunday, June 26th from 10:30-11:30 am in the Orange County Convention Center, Room W104
The Reference Research Forum continues to be one of the most popular and valuable programs during the ALA Annual Conference.  The following projects were selected using a blind review process by the RUSA RSS Research and Statistics Committee.
The Research Process of First-Year Students, Brandeis University, Laura Hibbler
As librarians, we often provide instruction to students at the early stages of the research process and do not have the opportunity to see the steps that students take next. Even when we do have the opportunity to see the end product of a student’s research, the student’s paper or project may reveal little about ways that the student’s research focus shifted over time and which parts of the research process caused frustration. This presentation will describe findings from a study that involved interviewing first-year students at three different points while they were working on a research paper. By interviewing students over the span of the time that they were working on their research essays, the librarian was able to ask students to reflect on the steps they had taken and students were able to provide a more complete picture of their research process.
Container Collapse! : How Students Determine Identity and Credibility of Digital Resources, University of Florida, Tara Tobin Cataldo
What does it mean to be format agnostic and what role does it play in a student’s determination of credibility of digital information? Our three-year, IMLS-funded research project explores this phenomenon with students from 4th grade to graduate school using age-appropriate science inquiry examples. The research team has created a new methodology for observing and studying information-seeking behavior in a simulated online environment. This presentation outlines our project, demonstrates the simulations, and discusses the study’s implications for all librarians, educators and online information providers. We seek your feedback and welcome lively dialogue.
Research Consultations and Dweck’s Theories of Intelligence, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Amanda L. Folk
Reference interactions, particularly research consultations, are informal teaching and learning opportunities in which librarians aim to help patrons develop information literacy skills and locate relevant information. Few studies, however, focus on understanding patrons’ motivations for consulting a librarian for help in order to explore whether or not these patrons are simply seeking to locate the relevant information or if they want to learn about the research process more generally through interactions with a librarian.  Carol Dweck identified the fixed and incremental theories of intelligence, which could affect how patrons navigate the research process, including if they will seek help from a librarian and what they intend to take away from that interaction.  This study seeks to determine if students who make appointments for research consultations with a librarian at small regional campus of a public research university subscribe to a particular theory of intelligence as defined by Carol Dweck, in order to provide evidence that can be used to inform reference practice and information literacy instruction.

Cindy Levine and Liz Kocevar-Weidinger, Co-Chairs 2015-2016

Virtual Reference Committee
The ETS/RSS Virtual Reference Services Committee is co-sponsoring a discussion forum with the ETS Virtual Reference Discussion group and the Virtual Reference Companion Subcommittee. The forum is titled “Fact or Fiction: What Virtual Reference Training Works and What Holds Promise.” The session will be a discussion of virtual reference training in both academic and public libraries. Two committee members will do a short (5 minute) presentation on the Virtual Reference Companion, and two other members will share their experiences with training programs at their libraries. The guided discussion will take place following the presentations. The forum will be held Sunday, June 26th at 4:30-5:30pm at the Hyatt Regency Orlando, Room Bayhill 20.

The committee has also recommended to the RUSA Standards and Guidelines committee that the Guidelines for Cooperative Reference Services be sunset. In other guideline news, the committee is currently revising the Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services.

Qiana Johnson, Chair 2015-2016

Virtual Reference Tutorial Subcommittee
Virtual Reference (VR) Companion Subcommittee will be co-sponsoring the Virtual Reference Discussion Forum at ALA Annual, along with the VR Discussion Group, and is preparing for that meeting, which will focus on training for virtual reference.
Fact or Fiction: What Virtual Reference Training Works and What Holds Promise, Sunday, June 26, 2016, 4:30-5:30 PM, HYATT Regency Orlando, Room Bayhill 20.
Work is being done on the companion to make navigation more intuitive and to include more content in some of the modules.

After the RUSA/RSS committee review process, a decision was made to merge the various VR committees, so the work of maintaining the VR Companion Subcommittee will be taken on by the new merged Virtual Reference Committee.

The VR Companion is accessible at http://www.ala.org/rusa/vrc, as well as in the Hot Links section of the RSS Virtual Reference Committee page, the Professional Tools section of the RUSA Resources page, and in the Web Resources section of the ALA Library Fact Sheet 19: Virtual Reference: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. Tips and Best Practices to include in the VR Companion module of the same name are always welcome! These can be directed to either co-chair, Laura Friesen (lflynn@umflint.edu), or Neal Pomea (neal.pomea@umuc.edu) or by leaving a comment on ALA Connect: (http://connect.ala.org/node/225501).

Laura Friesen, Co-chair 2015-16
Neal Pomea, Co-chair 2015-16

RSS Review is the newsletter of the Reference Services Section of Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association. Please send suggestions for future issues to Amy Rustic (aer123@psu.edu).

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Letter from the Chair

Greetings and salutations, my fellow STARS!  It’s hard to believe that ALA Annual is only a few weeks away. Our section will be offering several different programs during the Annual conference:

  • STARS Social, Friday June 24th from 8pm to 11pm at B.B. King’s Blues Club (9101 International Drive, Suite 2230) – Kick off ALA Annual with friends, food, and some jazz!
  • STARS All Committee Meeting, Saturday June 25 from 8:30am to 10am in HYATT Regency Orlando, Room Celebration 06. This is an open meeting, so if you’re curious about serving on a RUSA STARS committee please join us.
  • Interlibrary Loan Discussion Group, Saturday June 25 from 10:30am to 11:30am in Orange County Convention Center, Room W202B
  • Resource Sharing in Tomorrowland- A Panel Discussion about the Future of Interlibrary Loan, Saturday June 25 from 1pm-2:30pm in Orange County Convention Center, Room W206C
  • Not Your Average Consortia- A Panel Discussion about Consortial Partnerships and Resource Sharing, Saturday June 25 from 3pm to 4pm in Orange County Convention Center, Room S330 C-D
  • Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee Meeting, Sunday June 26 from 8:30am to 11:30am in HYATT Regency Orlando, Room Celebration 06
  • Hot Topics Discussion Group, Sunday June 26 from 3pm to 4pm in Orange County Convention Center, Room W202B

I hope to see many of you at these events in sunny Orlando- in the meantime, safe travels to all…  and don’t forget your Mouse Ears!

Tom Bruno
STARS Chair 2015/16
Director, Knowledge Curation and Innovation
The Westport Library

LLAMA SASS / RUSA STARS Consortial Borrowing Joint Committee
Please join us Saturday, June 25 at 3pm (OCCC, room W232) for the program “Not Your Average Consortia,” brought to you by the LLAMA SASS / RUSA STARS Consortial Borrowing Joint Committee. As library partnerships and collaborations are needed more than ever, library consortia are being relied upon more as resources and tools in a library’s future. This presentation will focus on what years of consortial development and participation has taught us. The panelists provide decades of experience with consortia partnerships and will be able to touch upon the “best of” practices in these partnerships. They will also guide a discussion on future developments and opportunities for all consortial cooperation.

Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee

Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee
The Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS) of ALA has selected the winner of the 2016 Atlas Systems Mentoring Award, Kimberly Steiner, interlibrary loan technician at Messiah College (Pa.).  Steiner was chosen because as the sole person in interlibrary loan at her library, attendance at the ALA Annual Conference would allow her to learn skills necessary to support users from Messiah College, an institution that is continually expanding their graduate programs; better understand the profession; and also network and learn from colleagues. This award, sponsored by Atlas Systems, Inc., offers $1,250 to a library practitioner new to the field of ILL and resource sharing to fund travel expenses to ALA Annual Conference in Orlando.

Amy Paulus, Chair
Boucher Award Committee

Boucher Award Committee
The Virginia Boucher-OCLC Distinguished ILL Librarian Award has been awarded to Tina Baich, associate librarian and head of resource sharing and delivery services, bibliographic and metadata services, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. Baich is honored for her outstanding and sustained contributions to the resource sharing community both nationally and internationally, her leadership on the Indiana Shared Print Project, her willingness to share her expertise with colleagues through a strong publication record and an impressive array of conference presentations and online courses, and an unflagging commitment to enhancing the teaching and learning mission of academic libraries throughout the State of Indiana. Sponsored by OCLC, this award offers $2,000 and a citation to a librarian showing outstanding professional achievement, leadership, and contributions to interlibrary loan and document delivery.

Please join me in congratulating Tina!

Collette Mak, Chair

Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee
After a two-year highly deliberative and consultative process, the new ILL Code was approved by RUSA S&G, STARS Exec, and the RUSA Board of Directors at ALA Midwinter in January 2016 and immediately took effect.  The revised text can now be found on the RUSA web site, and publication in Reference and User Services Quarterly is scheduled for the summer 2016 issue.  In February, our committee entered the promotion and publicity phase of our work which began with email listserv and Facebook postings about the new Code and Supplement.  In March, our committee began hitting the spring conference circuit to give presentations and conduct Q&As with practitioners across a wide variety of regions and groups:

  • In March, we did a presentation at the ILLiad conference in Virginia.
  • In April, we addressed the resource sharing folks at the GWLA conference in Colorado.
  • May was ACRL New England in New Hampshire.
  • June included the Great Lakes Resource Sharing Conference in Indianapolis, and we will also be part of the ILL Discussion Group at ALA Annual in Orlando, Florida.
  • The big marquee event comes July 19 when our committee will be offering a free online webinar on the new ILL Code with OCLC’s logistical and technical support.  This webinar will be open to all ILL practitioners at any library of any type or size and regardless of ILL system used.  The recording will also be free and available to anyone anywhere to watch and listen afterwards.  Publicity for this event will begin around June 1.
  • When the IFLA conference comes to Columbus, Ohio, in the month of August, Document Delivery and Resource Sharing delegates from around the world will be invited to a presentation on the U.S. ILL Code as well.

Brian Miller, Chair

STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Committee
The Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee is busy publicizing the STAR Checklist and we already have a few dozen libraries that have submitted their checklists and become STAR libraries. An expanded STAR Checklist -Version 2 (https://tufts.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cXPd0QGKjgCXHyB) is now ready…please fill it out and submit it to join the list of STARS (http://rethinkingresourcesharing.org/star-libraries/)!

Beth Posner, Chair

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BRASS Notes

John Gottfried, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

The BRASS Board will be having an online meeting on Tues. Feb. 23 from 1-3PM CST.

I also want to thank everyone for all the time and devotion they have committed to making BRASS the best section in RUSA! I’m looking forward to the Annual Conference in Orlando and I hope you all are as well. We have a great selection of programs, forums, meetings and social gatherings to look forward to as that time approaches.
Warm regards,
Paul Brothers, BRASS Chair 2015-2016

Business Reference Services Discussion Group
The BRASS Discussion Group facilitated a virtual discussion on November 13th. In attendance were 43 BRASS members. Topics included changes in SLA, the formation of RUSA interest groups, and much more. There was also an in-person discussion held at Midwinter in Boston on January 10th. Roughly 15 members were able to attend this discussion, which was focused around collections. Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in these discussions. The next virtual discussion will be on March 23th at 2pm EST. It will be an open agenda.

Emily Treptow 2014-2016 Chair

Business Reference in Academic Libraries Committee
Our committee has been holding virtual meetings the last few months in order to plan for our Academic Forum at Annual in Orlando: “Innovation and Risk Taking in Business Academic Librarianship:  Lightning Talks”. The Forum will feature up to seven academic business librarians discussing innovative practices, products or services. The Committee will select seven librarians to make 5-7 minute presentations with time after for discussion. We are willing to consider proposals with an element of risk, and even those describing a project that did not succeed. A call for proposals has been sent out, but we encourage all business librarian to submit their proposals using the form linked here: https://goo.gl/kv64mJ

Van Houlson, 2015-2016 Chair

Business Reference in Public Libraries Committee
The committee continues to work on updating the Public Libraries Briefcase and adding informative articles. The latest entry, “Understanding Financial Ratios for Small Business,” is a fascinating article written by Ray Cruitt. We will be meeting shortly to discuss new ideas to make it easier to exchange information about business reference resources with business librarians who support small businesses and budding entrepreneurs. Looking forward to Orlando…our committee will meet on June 25th at 3pm.

Salvatore DiVincenzo, 2015-2016 Chair

Business Reference Sources Committee
The Business Reference Sources Committee is in the process of nominating sources that will be selected for an upcoming issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly.

The Committee has also selected the program to be presented at the annual Publisher’s Forum, which will take place at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando. The title of the forum will be “One Part Social, One Part Commercial: A Recipe for Supporting Social Entrepreneurship.”

Ed Hahn, 2014-2016 Chair

Education Committee
The BRASS Education Committee continues to pursue a variety of exciting goals.  In addition to ongoing work to continually update BRASS Business Guides, four committee teams have been working on completing their individual projects:

  • Pre Conference Planning Team
    • Work continues on developing the 2016 BRASS Preconference “Business Data for Librarians” at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando. Our speakers have provided us with brief descriptions of their intended content, and we have used this information to send out advertising text to relevant listservs, social media outlets, ALA Connect and others. We will continue to advertise over the coming months, as well as working out the details of our interactive presentations. This looks to be an amazing Preconference! If you haven’t already, consider joining us on June 24th, 2016.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Tom Ottaviano, Peter McKay, Charles Allan and Emmy Solis.
  • Best of the Best Business Websites Award Team
    • After running another successful nomination and voting process, the Team is now completing the process of contacting Award winners. In addition, the Team developed and submitted a proposal to consider changing the award from a print certificate to a web badge; this proposal has been submitted to the Executive Committee.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Monica Hagan, Cara Cadena and Bridget Farrell.
  • Free Webinar Team
    • Having facilitated a very successful 2015 RUSA Free Section Webinar “Supporting Entrepreneurship: The Kauffman Foundation’s Research and Resources”, the team is currently responsible for soliciting ideas and speakers for a possible 2016 free webinar.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Phebe Dickson, Robbie De Peri and Christina Sheley.
  • Paid Webinar Team
    • The Team continues to investigate whether there is any need for further business reference webinars and whether this would be an appropriate or feasible undertaking for the Education Committee. Plans are to discuss this issue in greater depth at our Committee Meeting at ALA Annual 2016.
    • This team benefits from the efforts of Kelly LaVoice, Hiromi Kubo and LuMarie Guth.

The BRASS Education Committee has had a wonderful year learning and exploring ourselves, and we hope the business reference community feels we have provided similar opportunities to all of you!

Ashley Faulkner, 2012-2015 Chair

Nominating Committee
The BRASS Nominating Committee is excited to announce a slate of strong candidates for BRASS office:

  • BRASS Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect:
    Chad Boeninger
    Greg Fleming
  • Secretary
    Jared Hoppenfeld
    Ilana Stonebraker
  • Member at Large
    Annette Buckley
    Ed Rossman

Many thanks to the candidates, and to those who submitted nominations. BRASS will be in good hands.

Andy Spackman, 2015-2016 Chair

Program Planning Committee
Over 865 hotels with 103,230 rooms are scheduled to open in 2016, according to hotel research firm STR (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/performance/us/147000409/4073575.html). Want to learn more? Come to the BRASS ALA Annual Program “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes: Travel and Hospitality Landscape and Library Resources,” which will be held Monday, June 27th 8am to 10am at the ALA Annual Conference in beautiful Orlando, Florida. Breakfast sponsored by S&P Capital IQ.

Ilana Stonebraker, 2015-2016 Chair

Publications and Communications Committee
The P&C Committee will be holding a virtual meeting in February where we will discuss the following:

  • Social Media Policy
  • Appointing a new BRASS Notes Editor
  • Using RUSA Voices for BRASS
  • Discussion of BRASS-L content policy
  • Update of BRASS website projects

Chad Boeninger, 2014-2016 Chair

Vendor Relations Committee
There have been several changes in sponsorships for BRASS awards:

  • We are pleased to announce that Mergent is the new sponsor of the BRASS Excellence in Business Librarianship Award. The award is increased to $4000.
  • SimplyMap is now the sponsor of the BRASS Student Travel Award.
  • ReferenceUSA has confirmed they will continue to sponsor the BRASS members’ reception at ALA Annual in Orlando 2016.
  • Our long-time friends S&P Capital IQ continue to sponsor the BRASS continental breakfast prior to the BRASS program.
  • Mintel will once again sponsor the BRASS Discussion Group coffee.
  • Emerald has reached out to BRASS again about continuing the popular Emerald event as part of Annual, and early planning has started for 2017. We continue to thank Emerald for their sponsorship of the BRASS Emerald Research Award.

Be sure to let all our sponsors know how much we value their commitment to BRASS activities!

Ann Fiegen, 2015-2016 Chair

AWARD COMMITTEES

BRASS Mergent Learning Excellence in Business Librarianship Award
The BRASS Mergent Excellence in Business Librarianship committee is pleased to announce that Jared Hoppenfeld, business librarian at Texas A&M University, has been selected as this year’s recipient. A longtime BRASS member, Jared has published widely on topics relevant to academic and public business librarians, including “Information-Seeking Behaviors of Business Faculty,” the most-downloaded article of 2014 in the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship. A 2015 article, “Engaging with Entrepreneurs in Academic and Public Libraries,” was selected to be included in a special entrepreneurship-themed issue of Reference Services Review.

Business students at Texas A&M University also benefit from Jared’s expertise and creativity. After identifying a gap in the business information literacy schedule, Jared proposed a new program targeting first year students and now nearly all business students receive instruction starting their freshman year. Additionally, his current work with the national Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) has impacted not just his constituents at Texas A&M University but EBV programs across the country. He was the driving force behind the creation of the EBV Info Portal which coordinates among a growing number of database vendors, as well as staff, faculty and librarians at other EBV institutions.

For these contributions and other efforts, the committee is pleased to name Jared this year’s winner of the BRASS Mergent Excellence in Business Librarianship award. This award is generously sponsored by Mergent and consists of $4,000 and a citation. An award ceremony is planned for ALA Annual in Orlando. Congratulations, Jared!

Celia Ross, 2014-2015 Chair

Gale Cengage Learning Student Travel Award Committee
Katherine Glasoe is the recipient of the 2016 BRASS Student Travel Award. Katherine plans to graduate from Simmons College with her MLS in May 2016 and intends to pursue a career in business librarianship. She has gained practical work experience with her position as a Technical Services Assistant at Harvard Business School’s Baker Library, an internship with The Brattle Group, and with her position as a Graduate Student Library Assistant at Draper. While maintaining a busy work and academic schedule, she serves as the current President of the Simmons College student chapter of SLA. One of her goals is to become an active member of BRASS.

Diane Zabel, 2015-2016 Chair

Global Financial Data Academic Business Librarian Award
Ruth D. Terry, Business and Government Information Librarian at the University of Alaska Anchorage, is the recipient of the Global Financial Data Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award. Projects in her first year as a business librarian include using assessment results to shape library instruction, a mini-grant project to embed information literacy into specific courses, and using metrics and input from faculty to improve the collection. She has also been active as the co-chair of the new BRASS business librarians group, as secretary for the Anchorage chapter of the Alaska Library Association, and as a member of the Alaska Governor’s Council on Libraries. We wish Ms. Terry all the best in her new career and hope that this travel grant for the ALA annual meeting will help her to enhance the development of her career and to further contribute to the profession of business librarianship.

Julia Martin, 2015-2016 Chair

Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award Committee
The Morningstar Award committee met through email and publicized this award through various listservs, state association websites, and ALA Connect. We received 3 outstanding candidates and chose Susan Wolf Neilson as our recipient of the $1250 award to help with travel to this year’s Annual ALA Conference.

The committee worked well together and did a good job in selecting the award winner.

Committee members:

Patricia Hull
Kelly Jeanne Evans
Edmund A Rossman
Cynthia H Slater
Janet Tom

Patricia Hull, 2015-2016 Chair

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CODES

Barry Trott, Editor

ALA Midwinter saw another great round of book and media awards. Be sure to see the spring copy of RUSQ for a listing of all the award winners. Please mark your calendars for the RUSA Achievement Awards Ceremony 5-6:30 p.m. on June 26. This event is a great opportunity to the book award winners, as well as network with colleagues.

Appointments for 2016 CODES awards committees are just about complete, and CODES vice-chair, Dan Mack is getting set to start appointing members to other CODES committees as well as CODES representatives to RUSA level committees. Volunteers should fill out the form at http://www.ala.org/rusa/volunteer, or email me at dmack@umd.edu.  If members have a question about what membership on a particular committee may entail, please feel free to email Dan at dmack@umd.edu.

The CODES executive committee is working on their section review. Done every 5 years, the section review is a chance to look at the structure and operations of the section and see what is working well and what might be changed to improve CODES. The section review will be submitted to the RUSA Board later this spring.

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RSS

Jane Daugherty, Editor        RSS logo                  

 

 

Message from the Chair:

Hi everyone,

I hope all of you who attended Midwinter in Boston enjoyed yourselves and that your in-person and virtual meetings were productive.  The RSS Pancake Breakfast was a lot of fun and the discussion forums and deep dive that were sponsored or co-sponsored by RSS committees were well attended.  I’m sure our events in Orlando will be just as successful.

Committee chairs and some RSS Executive Board members have been hard at work over the last few months on the RSS Section Review.  The review is a two part process comprised of individual committee reviews completed by the committee chairs and an overall section review based on the committee reviews.  Thank you to all of the committee chairs for completing their committee reviews and an extra special thank you goes to Ann Brown, Liz DeCoster, Cynthia Johnson, and Amy Rustic for helping me write the section review.  The completed document, with an appendix containing all of the committee reviews, will be posted to ALA Connect after it is submitted.

Committee appointments are underway and we are looking for volunteers to fill spots on RSS and RUSA committees.  Amy Rustic, RSS Vice Chair, has started the appointment process and has been in touch with many of you already.  If you have not been contacted by Amy and you’re interested in volunteering for a committee, fill out the RUSA volunteer form here: http://www.ala.org/CFApps/Committee/volunteerform/volunteerform2.cfm?group1=RUSA

If you have questions, or would like to learn more about RSS and its committees, please feel free to contact me at crystal.lentz@sos.wa.gov or Amy Rustic at aer123@psu.edu

Be on the lookout for information about the programs, discussion forums, and other RSS sponsored events at Annual as the conference draws nearer!

Crystal Lentz
crystal.lentz@sos.wa.gov
RSS Chair, 2015-16

 

RSS Honor Roll
It’s that time of year! We want to recognize you and your contributions to RSS!

The RSS Honor Roll gives recognition to active RSS members who have served the section in three different capacities since its inception.

If you have been a member of three or more committees or discussion groups since RSS was established in 2004 and have not previously been added to the honor roll, please send your name and a list of the three ways you have served RSS to Ellen Keith at keith@chicagohistory.org

Not only will you become a member of this esteemed group, you will also be recognized at ALA Annual in Orlando!

Join the RSS Honor Roll today

RSS COMMITTEE REPORTS

Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee
The Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee will be sponsoring a discussion forum at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando on assisting patrons at the point of need through social media. Details are below:

“Please Throw Me a Vine! Assisting Patrons at the Point of Need through Social Media”

Given the large and growing percentage of the American population that is now using social networking sites for communication, it’s likely that your patrons will pose questions and research challenges on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Join us for a discussion on how we can best communicate at this developing point of need.

When: Sunday, June 26, 3-4pm
Where: TBA

The Committee’s Selected Bibliography on Point of Need Reference and Instruction is available here: http://connect.ala.org/node/233262

Colleen Seale, Chair 2015-2016

Discovery Services Committee (Formerly Catalog Use Committee)
The Discovery Services Committee has been meeting virtually to discuss plans for the year and for ALA Annual.  As a committee we completed the RSS Self Study/ Section Review. Within this review we reflected on our purpose within the Reference Services Section and within the American Library Association. The Discovery Services Committee is the only one that specifically focuses on how cataloging and discovery service trends impact reference services.

Over the past several years we have hosted a bibliography of relevant reference/discovery & cataloging citations on ALA Connect. The committee decided that it would be best to conduct a review of the literature annually and explore ways to post the bibliography to the RSS website.

The committee also discussed plans to hold and RSS Forum at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference. The theme of this year’s forum is “Exploring Engagement between Discovery and the Catalog. This forum will focus on how the Library Catalog still an essential presence on most library websites and explore how it’s being used by reference librarians.

Anne Larrivee, Chair 2015-2016

 Evaluation of Reference and User Services
ERUS is working on our research project via survey.  We will:

  • Request screenshots or pdfs of their data collection forms to ascertain what info is collected and extrapolate what has changed from the hash mark days.
  • Get basic background info, such as type of library (academic, archive, medical, public, school, special, &c.) and how they use data (reporting, staffing decisions, hours, training, etc.).
  • Ask a few open questions such as: what’s the most useful thing you do with your data; what would you like to learn about your service, but do not currently measure; etc.
  • Code the submissions into categories and analyze the results.

Rebecca Graff, Chair 2015-2016

Health and Medical Reference Committee
On January 12, 2016 the Health and Medical Reference Committee (HMRC) held its virtual Midwinter meeting. In attendance were six current committee members and one new person who attended in hopes of learning more about the committee. Much of the time was spent preparing for the RSS section review, and the HMRC’s report to the RSS Chair. The committee discussed answers to proposed questions and Laura Haines, HMRC Chair, wrote and submitted the report to the RSS Chair shortly after the meeting. The Committee also discussed future leadership and membership. HMRC is happy to announce that member Ann Glusker has agreed to be the chair starting July 2016. The committee also has many members who will be leaving the group at that time. We encourage anyone who has any interest in health reference to check out this committee; exciting work and programming is continuing! If you have any questions about the work of the committee, please do not hesitate to contact Laura Haines at Laura.Haines@uvm.edu or Ann Glusker at Ann.Glusker@spl.org.

HMRC continues to work to promote our recently revised Guidelines as well as Medref, a health and medicine oriented listserv available to anyone answering health related reference questions managed by the Committee. The aim of the listserv is to be an open and welcoming environment for library workers from all types of libraries to discuss all questions or issues related to health and medical reference. Member Toni Holbrecht presented a “press release” about Medref to the Committee during the virtual Midwinter meeting that will be used in various venues to promote this exciting listserv.

HMRC has joined forces with ACRL’s Health Sciences Interest Group in offering a Discussion Forum at ALA in Orlando this July. The forum, entitled “Implementing Health and Medical Reference Guidelines: Training librarians, paraprofessionals and part time staff,” will highlight how the new Health and Medical Reference Guidelines can best be implemented in any type of library, including how to train professional as well as non-professional staff regarding what are often sensitive reference questions. More details to follow, but we hope all interested in learning more about providing excellent health reference will be able to attend.

Laura Louise Haines, Chair 2015-2016

Services for Job-Seeking Patrons
In the January 15, 2016, meeting the RSS Board approved changing the name of this committee from the Job and Career Reference Committee to Services for Job-Seeking Patrons. This change should clear up some confusion about the purpose of this committee.

On January 9, 2016, our committee held a discussion forum at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. The discussion focused on assisting low-skill workers and non-Internet users with job searches. We had 23 attendees and a very lively discussion. Keyboarding, computer skills and access to computers remain an issue for many patrons. Limited literacy and English language skills are also commonly observed. The local government job center can often be a partner. In addition, it can be effective to be present at a multi-agency fair where multiple services are present.  Examples include kindergarten sign-up and registering for government assistance. A more detailed summary of the discussion is posted on ALA Connect for anyone who is interested.

Arlene Weismantel, Chair, 2015-2016

Virtual Reference Committee
The committee has been reviewing guidelines under its purview. The committee has recommended to the RUSA Standards and Guidelines committee that the Guidelines for Cooperative Reference Services be sunset. The committee is currently updating the Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services. The committee is also co-sponsoring a discussion forum at Annual with the Virtual Reference Discussion Group.

Qiana Johnson, Chair 2015-2016

Virtual Reference Tutorial Subcommittee
The Virtual Reference (VR) Companion Subcommittee has been working on ideas for making the companion more useful and intuitive, suggested by new members of the committee. These include different formatting, for example including Tips and Best Practices as part of the main menu in the left margin of the page; and additional content, for example, distilling some of the articles listed in the bibliography in the Assessment module to create useful guidance in that module. The Subcommittee participated in the committee review process for RUSA/RSS, a process that happens every four years to ensure the effectiveness and ongoing usefulness of RUSA sections and committees. The Subcommittee has been discussing the possibility of co-sponsoring, with the VR Services Committee, the Virtual Reference Discussion Forum at ALA Annual coming up in June. The VR Companion is accessible at http://www.ala.org/rusa/vrc, as well as in the Hot Links section of the RSS Virtual Reference Committee page, the Professional Tools section of the RUSA Resources page, and in the Web Resources section of the ALA Library Fact Sheet 19: Virtual Reference: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. The Subcommittee continues to welcome suggestions for its Tips and Best Practices module; these can be directed to either co-chair, Laura Friesen (lflynn@umflint.edu), or Neal Pomea (neal.pomea@umuc.edu) or by leaving a comment on ALA Connect: (http://connect.ala.org/node/225501).

Laura Friesen, Co-chair 2015-16
Neal Pomea, Co-chair 2015-16

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Message from the Chair

My Fellow STARS,

The ALA Midwinter Meeting has come and gone and I hope you were able to join us in Boston for some of the fun and excitement. Our members were busy and highlights include two very interesting panel discussions hosted by STARS: at the ILL Discussion Group we had a thoughtful assessment of the 2005 Task Force on Qualifications for Interlibrary Loan Operations Management and the Hot Topics Discussion Group featured a presentation about shared print collections in Maine.

Behind the scenes, STARS and RUSA board members worked tirelessly to secure approval of the revised Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, shepherding the proposal through THREE separate votes in just 24 hours! Many thanks, again, to Brian Miller and the Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee for seeing this monumental task through to completion.

Now, our attention turns to the Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida – just four short months away! In addition to the ILL Discussion Group and Hot Topics, RUSA STARS will be hosting several events during Annual:

  • A Spoonful of Data-Driven Sugar: Using Big Business Research to Improve Customer Satisfaction in Easy-to-Implement, Single-Serving Packets. A pre-conference workshop on Friday June 24, from 8am-12noon
  • Not Your Average Consortia. A panel presentation co-sponsored by RUSA STARS and LLAMA-SASS on Sunday June 26, from 10:30-11:30am
  • Resource Sharing in Tomorrowland: A Panel Discussion about the Future of Interlibrary Loan on Sunday June 26, from 1-2:30pm

Also, mark your calendars for the STARS Social on Friday June 24, from 7:30-10pm (Location: TBA).

I hope to see you all in June!

Your Chair,

Tom Bruno
Chair 2015-2016

Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee
The RUSA Board of Directors approved the revised Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States at ALA Midwinter and it was mounted, with the new Explanatory Supplement and ALA ILL Request Form, on RUSA’s website.  On February 15, 2016, the Codes Committee publicly announced the updated documents on a variety of listservs and on Facebook. Publication in RUSQ is expected to appear in the summer of 2016.

The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee is now planning additional publicity for the new documents. There will be presentations at the ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach, in March 2016, and at the Great Lakes Resource Sharing Conference in Indiana, in June 2016.  The Committee is tentatively working on presentations for GWLA’s annual conference and for ACRL New England, as well. Committee members Nora Dethloff and Tina Baich will be working on an article for The Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery, & Electronic Reserves. The committee is also exploring the possibility of recording a live webinar with OCLC, this summer, which will be free to all ILL practitioners.

Committee chair Brian Miller is also pursuing a presentation opportunity for delegates to the IFLA Conference in Columbus, Ohio, this summer.

Brian Miller
Chair

STARS Education & Training Committee
Over the summer of 2015, ShareILL.org migrated to a new platform that is hosted by DreamHost. Linda Frederiksen, Jake Kubrin, and Kristen Palmiere transferred information from the former platform to the new one and the new ShareILL.org was announced on listservs in October 2015. Thank you to all the STARS committees who are currently updating sections of the new site. All users of the site are encouraged to submit any updates or suggestions for new pages to ShareILL4All@gmail.com.

On January 8th, 2016, the 9th annual Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL workshop took place at the Boston Public Library. Thank you to the Boston Public Library, OCLC, and Atlas Systems for sponsoring the event, and special thanks to Megan Gaffney, Karen Janke, Cindy Kristof, and Collette Mak for their excellent presentations. The event was well-attended and well-received. Planning for next year’s workshop in Atlanta is underway.

Kristen Palmiere
Chair

STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Committee
The live link to the STAR Checklist (Version 2) of best practices in interlibrary loan/library resource sharing is now available at http://rethinkingresourcesharing.org/star-checklist-2!

Please review these checklist items and join our growing list of STAR Libraries. Together, we can start valuable discussions about library practices and keep rethinking resource sharing to even better serve users.

Thank you to Broward County Public Library, The Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, and Kansas City Public Library, who are our first participants!

Beth Posner
Chair

STARS Nominations Committee
The STARS Nominations Committee has just confirmed the final slate of candidates for the upcoming ALA elections. The 2016 elections will open on March 15 and close on April 22.  Results will be announced on April 29, 2016.  Eligible members will be emailed their voting credentials between March 15 and March 18, 2016.  Everyone should remember to vote!

Nora Dethloff
Chair

LLAMA SASS / RUSA STARS Consortial Borrowing Joint Committee
The Joint Consortial Borrowing Committee has been hard at work planning our program for ALA Annual 2016. Please make sure to join us for:
Not Your Average Consortia
Sunday 10:30 -11:30 am

Description: As library partnerships and collaborations are needed more than ever, library consortias are being relied upon more as resources and tools in a library’s future. This presentation will focus on what years of consortial development and participation has taught us. The panelist provide decades of experience in consortial partnerships and will be able to touch upon the “best of” practices in these partnerships. They will also guide a discussion on future developments and opportunities for all consortial cooperation.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Heather Weltin
Co-Chair

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CODES

Barry Trott, Editor

Chair’s Note
CODES conducted a “Town Hall” meeting for members on 11/18/15. The discussions will continue at the ALA Midwinter conference in Boston.

We encourage all CODES and RUSA members to make plans to attend RUSA’s Book and Media Awards Reception on Sunday evening during ALA Midwinter. Award winners will be announced for numerous awards that CODES committees are currently working on, including Notable Books, Sophie Brody, Reading List, Dartmouth, Best Reference Books, and others.

Anyone interested in getting involved in CODES should fill out the committee volunteer form to indicate their interest in serving. Many CODES committees are now virtual, so opportunities may exist for participating that were not available in the past. Anyone with questions about appointments to CODES committees should check with Dan Mack, CODES Vice Chair/Chair-Elect if you have any questions (dmack@umd.edu). More information is available on the CODES web site: http://ww.ala.org/rusa/sections/codes/section.

Ed Kownslar, CODES Chair, 2015-16

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Message from the Chair

Dear STARS,

I hope everyone is having a wonderful fall — can you believe that the Midwinter Meeting is already less than two months away? If you are coming to Boston this January and are currently serving on a STARS committee, don’t forget to attend the All Committee Meeting on Saturday (January 9th) morning from 8:30-10 am in Room 158 of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. This is an open meeting, so if you are interested in serving on a committee for the 2016-2018 term, feel free to join us and see what it’s all about!

We have two exciting discussions planned as well:

Discussion Forum I – At 10:30 am on Saturday (January 9th) the ILL Discussion Group will revisit the Task Force on Qualifications for Interlibrary Loan Operations Management, which was convened in 2005 and presented its guidelines at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting. Should an ILL librarian be a professional position? How important is the MLS to the business and practice of resource sharing? Is it time for us to come up with a new set of qualifications and guidelines? Let’s discuss what the Task Force had to say back then and whether or not the same holds true for today.

Discussion Forum II – At 4:30 on Saturday (January 9th) the Hot Topics Discussion Group will kick off a new format where we will feature discussions at both our Midwinter and Annual conferences around a new theme, which will be selected every fall. This discussion theme for 2015-2016 will shared collections- we hope you can join us and “share” your own library’s experiences and best practices in collaborating strategically with other libraries.

Both Discussion Forums will take place in Room 205A of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Safe travels to all of you who will be attending the Midwinter Meeting, and all the best during the upcoming holiday season. As always, thank you for the contribution of your time, effort, and enthusiasm in making STARS the wonderful community that it is!

Best,

Tom Bruno
Chair 2015-2016

Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee
The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee has submitted drafts of changes for the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, its Explanatory Supplement, and the ALA ILL Request Form to the resource sharing community for review and comment via anonymous survey or email response. The public comment period ends on November 15, 2015 and the committee will then review feedback in December to see if additional changes to the documents are warranted.

Brian Miller, Chair

Outreach and Promotion Committee
The Outreach and Promotion Committee (formerly known as Membership) is currently working with our next STARGazer and plan on promoting this before Midwinter! We’re also continuing to work on the STARS Digital Timeline and will be putting a callout for people to share pictures and documents from past conferences since the birth of STARS. We’ve completed our annual review of the “Five Things” document this year and will be sharing it with STARS Members, asking for feedback and input on the future of this document and type of information sharing.

Micquel Little, Chair

STARS Nominations Committee
The STARS Nominations Committee has wrapped up our work for the year. The STARS slate for ALA elections includes excellent candidates for Vice Chair, Secretary, and Member at Large. They are:

For Vice Chair:
Charla Gilbert
Krista Higham
Micquel Little

For Secretary:
Ken Carriveau
Naomi Chow
Carol Kochan

For Member at Large:
Peter Bae
Leila Smith

Nora Dethloff, Chair

STARS Legislation and Licensing Committee
The Legislation and Licensing Committee has revised the charge for the committee. The revised charge will be presented to the STARS Executive Board at the Midwinter meeting. Once the revised charge is accepted, the committee will be developing a strategic plan.

Ryan Buller, Chair

Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee
The RUSA STARS Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee has promoted this scholarship and 2 applications have been received, with several other inquiries made. We expect to do another round of publicity before the December 4th deadline. Please share this award with potential nominees. More information is available at http://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/mentoring.

Amy Paulus, Chair

STARS Update on the RUSA Professional Development Committee
The RUSA Professional Development Committee has reviewed the online course and webinar proposals for the next year. The committee is still waiting on some revisions before we will have an exact count of accepted proposals. Once I have the exact count, that information will be communicated to the STARS Board.

Ryan Buller, STARS Representative

STARS Update on the RUSA Conference Program Coordinating Committee
The RUSA Conference Program Coordinating Committee has just begun their work. We have been asked to look over the documents from the previous year and report any problems no later than November 30, 2015. In particular, the committee is to review last year’s proposal submission form and provide suggested changes. The goal of this review is to revise the form, ensure clarity, and confirm that responses will give the committee enough information to make an informed decision.

Martha Yancey, STARS Representative

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BRASS Notes

John C. Gottfried, Editor

Message from the Outgoing BRASS Chair

Dear BRASS members:

The reports below provide specifics about the current BRASS committee activities. Thanks to everyone who was able to attend ALA Annual San Francisco. We held a Preconference, Public Librarian Forum event, Publisher’s Forum, BRASS Discussion Group and the successful BRASS Program—Not Elsewhere Classified: Different Approaches to Researching Emerging Industries.

I’ve enjoyed serving as BRASS Chair. As of the end of Annual, Paul Brothers has assumed the Chair duties. We’re looking forward to another engaging year from BRASS under Paul’s leadership.

Todd Hines, Chair 2014-2015

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RSS

Jane Daugherty, Editor   

RSS_Logo

RSS has had an active year. The various committees held several discussion forums and programs over the course of the year, including a very well attended discussion forum on reference education for librarians, a program on the effect of the Common Core on librarians, and the 20th Reference Research Forum. The coming year promises to be an equally exciting programming year. The Education and Professional Development for Reference Committee along with the ETS UX Committee will be holding a “Deep Dive”, a new ALA programming initiative, at Midwinter. RSS is also collaborating across ALA. The section is co-sponsoring a program proposal with the Continuing Resource Section in ALTCS on the topic of a conversation between public services and technical services staff. At this time, we are awaiting word if the program has been approved. The committees have also provided alternative programming outside of the conferences. The Management of Reference committee hosted an e-forum on “broadening of library services by building relationships with campus units and cross-training staff to create a synergistic combination that redefines the research experience of our community by meeting them where they are.” In the summer, the joint ETS/RSS Virtual Reference Services committee is hosting an e-forum on the current state of virtual reference.

The committees have also worked in areas outside of programming. The Health and Medical Reference committee has updated the guidelines for the provision of health and medical reference which were approved by the RUSA board at Annual. At the request of the Library Services to the Spanish Speaking, the RSS Board voted to change the committee’s name to the Committee on Multilingual Library Services. In the coming year, the committee will be working to update its guidelines. The section as a whole will be going through section review in the 2015-16 year and will use this opportunity to review the work of the sections.

Qiana Johnson

Chair, Reference Services Section, 2015-2016

Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee
The Communication and Teaching at the Point of Need Committee held a one-hour discussion forum at the ALA Conference in San Francisco. The forum included an overview of the results of Committee’s recent survey on point of need service and instruction that identified both challenges and opportunities. Dr. David Schwieder, Political Science Liaison Librarian and Coordinator of Humanities and Social Science Data Services at the University of Florida, followed with a brief presentation on one of the challenges identified in the survey, “Frameworks for Data and Statistics Reference.” Table discussions on this and other topics were held during the remaining time.

Colleen Seale, Chair 2015-2016

Virtual Reference Companion Subcommittee
The Virtual Reference (VR) Companion Subcommittee will hold its first meeting of 2015/16 on August 5, 2015. The committee has five new members this year, and will be reassigning responsibilities for keeping all the modules of the VRC up to date and useful.

The Subcommittee got approval through the RSS Board for changing its name to the Virtual Reference Companion Subcommittee on July 20, 2015. The name change should be reflected soon on the ALA web site.

The Subcommittee once again this year will be soliciting tips and best practices to be incorporated into the “Tips and Best Practices” section of the Virtual Reference Companion from all librarians who provide virtual reference. RSS members may submit suggestions for this content by leaving a comment on ALA Connect (http://connect.ala.org/node/225501) or by sending an email to one of the co-chairs, Laura Friesen (lflynn@umflint.edu), or Neal Pomea (neal.pomea@umuc.edu).

The VR Companion is accessible at http://www.ala.org/rusa/vrc, as well as in the Hot Links section of the RSS Virtual Reference Committee page, the Professional Tools section of the RUSA Resources page, and in the Web Resources section of the ALA Library Fact Sheet 19: Virtual Reference: A Selected Annotated Bibliography.

Laura Friesen, Co-chair 2015-16
Neal Pomea, Co-chair 2015-16

Health and Medical Reference Committee
The Health and Medical Reference Committee (HMRC) chair, Laura Haines, attended the RSS All Committee Meeting and Open House on Saturday, June 27th at ALA Annual 2015 in San Francisco. While no other Health and Medical Reference Committee members were able to attend, it was a good chance to get updates on RSS, to meet other chairs and members of RSS, and to be able to put a few faces to names!

On Sunday, June 28th, HMRC members Laura Haines, Karen Vargas and Qiana Johnson introduced the new Health and Medical Reference Guidelines during the HMRC’s Discussion Forum: Get to Know the New RUSA Guidelines for Health and Medical Reference Services. Karen and Laura introduced the Guidelines, and then a conversation followed. Most attendees were academic librarians, and all believed the new Guidelines would be helpful for assisting those who work at the reference desk, especially student workers who are sometimes reluctant to field health-related questions. It was noted that the trend in academic libraries is to have para-professionals or students staff reference desks, or to close reference desks and move reference interactions to a circulation or main desk. This trend puts a fair bit of responsibility on paraprofessionals and students, and support from guidelines such as these may become quite useful, attendees thought.

On Monday, June 29th, at ALA Annual 2015 in San Francisco, the Health and Medical Reference Guidelines were approved by the RUSA Board of Directors. They can be found on the RUSA Website here: http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesmedical/

Laura Louise Haines, Chair 2015-2016

Discovery Services Committee
This year’s RSS Discovery Services Forum, titled “Examining Discovery Systems within the New Information Literacy Framework” featured three informative speakers and welcomed over 100 attendees. The session was held on Sunday, June 28th, from 3-4pm and was co-sponsored with the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT). The featured speakers included Holly Luetkenhaus of Washington State University Libraries with the presentation “Teaching Strategic Searching Practices in Discovery Systems,” Elise Ferer of Drexel University Libraries with the presentation “Discovering that Authority is Constructed,” and Cody Hennesy of UC Berkeley Libraries with the presentation “The Universal Library & the Economics of Discovery: Teaching Discovery.” The first half of the forum included brief presentations that were followed by Q&A. Next, tables of 4-8 people were encouraged to discuss a set of discussion questions related to the theme of the forum. Feedback ranged from good to excellent and included comments such as, “Thank you so much for addressing this important topic!” and “We all seem to be green with the Framework and Discovery- let us keep discovering it.” To review the PPT slide presentations from the forum visit the RSS Discovery Services Committee’s ALA Connect page (http://alaac15.ala.org/node/29473). The Discovery Services Committee welcomes the members Cynthia Johnson and Lesley Looper and welcomes back members Steve Brantley and Sue Dittmar.

Anne Larrivee, Chair 2015-2016

Research and Statistics Committee
This year, the Research & Statistics Committee hosted the 21st Annual Reference Research Forum on Sunday, June 28th at the Moscone Conference Center in San Francisco. After a double-blind review process, the committee selected 3 research teams to present their results. Frans Albarillo from the City University of New York presented the results of a survey of immigrant and international student research habits to investigate common patterns and to explore how these students experience the academic library. Marianne Colgrove and Annie Downey from Reed College presented the results of a needs assessment to address the gap between faculty and student perspectives on the research process, focusing on the critical sophomore and junior years. The result of a collaborative project between IT and the Library, their presentation shared the fruits of collaboration and assessment that can in turn be used to develop new research curricula and services. Finally, Jean Amaral from the Borough of Manhattan Community College presented the results of a year-long ethnographic study, likening the library to an endangered species and revealing the environmental conditions affecting the change and survival of the community college library. Each presentation garnered a number of interesting questions. The committee also reviewed and posted an annotated bibliography of articles relating to reference research for the 2014 Annual Reference Research Review. – See more at: http://connect.ala.org/node/242913

Ava M. Brillat, Chair 2015-2016

Committee on Multilingual Library Services (formerly the Library Services to the Spanish Speaking Committee)
I am happy to report that the RSS Board approved changing our committee name from Library Services to the Spanish Speaking Committee to the Committee on Multilingual Library Services at Annual. A change in charge accompanies the change in name and next up is updating guidelines.

Crystal Lentz, Chair 2015-2016

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Message from the Chair

Hi, everyone!

My name is Tom Bruno and I am your STARS chair for 2015-2016. I am currently the Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at the Yale University Library; before that I worked as the Head of Resource Sharing at Widener Library at the Harvard College Library. I have been working off and on in the field of resource sharing for almost twenty years, and was drawn to volunteer as a member of RUSA STARS on account of our section’s strong sense of community. The outward-facing nature of interlibrary loan means that cooperation beyond the walls of one’s own library is a basic requirement- the work done by STARS and our members helps foster that spirit of cooperation by sharing best practices, knowledge, and a sense of mutual obligation and trust. Over the years I have served RUSA STARS as webmaster and chair of the International ILL Committee, and I consider it an honor to continue that service now as section chair.

STARS had an exciting series of programming available at the 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. Many thanks to the Research and Assessment Committee and their panel of speakers for their preconference “ILL Datastorm: Practical Assessment,” as well as the ILL Committee and their panel presentation “Acquisitions, Collection Development, Electronic Resources and ILL, Oh My!: Connecting Users to What They Want.” Both offerings were well-attended and well-received! We also saw our ILL and Hot Topics discussion groups use previous attendee feedback to experiment with new formats and topics. Both experiments were a success and we will continue to reinvent these forums to keep them exciting and relevant to our membership. Speaking of Membership, thanks to Micquel Little and the Membership Committee for another successful STARS Social on the Friday night of the Annual Conference. And, of course, my heartfelt thanks to Tina Baich for all of her fantastic work over the past year as STARS chair.

While the final list of STARS programs for Midwinter and Annual 2016 has not yet been confirmed, we are looking forward to supporting another year of great offerings, including the Education and Training Committee’s perennial favorite, ILL 101 workshop (aka “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL”). This will be held at the Boston Public Library during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in, next January. And, of course, since Annual 2016 will be in Orlando, I will be planning the very first ILL librarian flashmob on the Jungle Cruise at Disney World!

In addition to supporting our events at the conferences, we have a lot of ongoing committee projects. Look out for updated bylaws, a new and improved International ILL survey, and ShareILL’s move to a new home. To say that none of this work would be possible without all of your help may seem a cliché, but it really is true. STARS is only as strong as our membership and I’m happy to say that, based upon the activities of the past year and those we have planned for the upcoming year, we’re looking very strong, indeed. Thanks again to everyone for your time and energy – let’s make this another great year for STARS!

Tom Bruno
STARS Chair 2015-2016

Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee
The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee completed revisions for the first drafts of the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, its Explanatory Supplement, and the ALA ILL Request Form in April. The drafts were presented to the STARS Executive Committee in May, where they were unanimously approved. The RUSA Standards and Guidelines Committee discussed the drafts and approved them with comments at ALA Annual. The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee will be discussing RUSA S&G’s feedback over the summer and hopes to share the documents during a public comment phase in late summer or early fall with a goal of promulgating a final version by early 2016.

Brian Miller, Chair

STARS Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee
Congratulations to Karen Thomas, who was this year’s award winner. She currently serves as the Access Services Librarian at Krauskopf Library at Delaware Valley College. She was joined by Committee Mentor, Megan Gaffney, at ALA San Francisco.

This year marked a change in the procedure for the RUSA awards ceremony in that a representative from STARS presents all the STARS awards, rather than having a different presenter for each award. Tina Baich served this role.

Bethany B. Sewell, Chair

RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee
The RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee has continued to work on Version 2 of the ALA RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing STAR Checklist. Version 2 has been entered into Tufts University’s Qualtrics site and the scoring mechanism has been tested. We expect to have it available on the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative website for libraries to use by September 2015. We spent the rest of our meeting at the ALA Annual Conference to plan promotion and training events.

Sue Kaler, Chair

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BRASS Notes

John Gottfried, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at ALA Annual in San Francisco.
Here are the primary BRASS-sponsored events at Annual:

  • BRASS Preconference: Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs, 8am-1pm, Friday
  • BRASS Members Reception sponsored by ReferenceUSA, Friday 5:30-7:30pm at         ThirstyBear, 661 Howard St, San Francisco.
  • Public Libraries Forum – Revenue Streams for Libraries. Naming rights, corporate sponsorships, crowd funding, and other non-levy type revenue sources. Saturday 1-2:30pm
  • BRASS Discussion Group – Sunday 8:30-10am
  • Publishers forum – topic is financial literacy and the scheduled presenters are S&P Capital IQ, Mergent, Morningstar, and the San Francisco Federal Reserve. Sunday 1-2:30pm
  • 2015 BRASS Program – Not Elsewhere Classified: Different Approaches to Researching Emerging Industries. S&P Capital IQ sponsored breakfast: Monday, 8:00 – 8:30am. Program: 8:30-10am.
  • BRASS Dinner will be Monday night at 6:30pm. Location details will follow.

These BRASS awards and grants will also be recognized at the RUSA Awards Ceremony and Reception:

  • Peter McKay, Gale Cengage Learning Excellence in Business Librarianship Award
  • Jason Dewland and Cindy Elliott, Emerald Research Grant Award
  • Barbara Alvarez, Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award
  • Grace Liu, Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award
  • Sara Hess, Gale Cengage Learning Student Travel Award

The full BRASS program/event guide will be sent out on BRASS-L.

Todd Hines
BRASS Chair 2014-2015
thines@princeton.edu

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RSS Review

Amy Rustic, Editor

RSS logo

Message from the Chair

ALA Annual in San Francisco is right around the corner and RSS is sponsoring several programs and discussion groups on topics from the updated guidelines for health and medical reference, reference education, discovery systems in light of the New Framework for Information Literacy, and much more. All of the programs and discussion forums sponsored by RSS are put together by the committees. Conference programming is often just a part of the work of the committees. Join us on Saturday, June 27 from 8:30-10am at the Parc 55 San Francisco Hotel for the RSS Open House and All-Committee meeting. This event allows attendees to learn about the work of the committees and to talk to its members. At the Open House there is also the opportunity to express interest in joining a committee. Also at Annual, RSS and MARS: Emerging Technologies in Reference section will be hosting a joint happy hour where people can learn about the sections and network with other library professionals. Details will be available in the coming weeks.

This year’s RUSA President’s Program is on “It’s Complicated: Navigating the Dynamic Landscapes of Digital Literacy, Collapsing Contexts, and Big Data” presented by danah boyd on Saturday, June 27 from 4-5:30pm.

Again, these are just a small selection of the programming sponsored by RSS and RUSA. Stay tuned to the Conference Scheduler and the RSS-L listserv to learn more. I look forward to seeing many of you in San Francisco!

Qiana Johnson
q-johnson@northwestern.edu
RSS Chair, 2014-2015

 

RSS Honor Roll

When you hear Honor Roll, do you have flashbacks to high school? Maybe you have happy memories of the honor roll or maybe you think “could’ve, would’ve, should’ve…”

Regardless of your experience in high school, you may be eligible for the RSS Honor Roll.

The RSS has an Honor Roll that gives recognition to active RSS members who have served the section in three different capacities since its inception.

If you have been a member of three or more committees or discussion groups since RSS was established in 2004 and have not previously been added to the honor roll, please send your name and a list of the three ways you have served RSS to Sarah Hammill at hammills@fiu.edu

Not only will you become a member of this esteemed group, you will also be recognized at ALA Annual in San Francisco!

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

 

Message from the Chair

Dear STARS Members and Friends,

STARS has some great programming planned for ALA Annual in San Francisco! In addition to our staple Discussion Groups, we are sponsoring a program titled Acquisitions, Collection Development, Electronic Resources, and ILL, Oh My!: Connecting Users to What They Want! (Sunday, June 28, 1-2pm, MCC 2002 (W)). This lightning round session will cover topics like how patron ILL requests influence collection development; how demand driven acquisitions affects interlibrary loan; adapting ILL operations to the current environment, and more.

STARS is also offering a pre-conference, ILL Data Storm – Practical Assessment (Friday, June 26, 9am,-1pm). Our programs on data use in ILL are always popular, so the Research and Assessment Committee has put together an amazing panel of speakers to provide further insight on this important topic. The panel will speak to how they collect and use data, whether to improve services, influence collection decisions or justify their existence. At the end of the program, attendees will walk away with ideas about how to assess their ILL data for improvements in their department. Be sure to register!

I sincerely hope you’ll be able to join us for these exciting learning and networking opportunities! If you aren’t able to be in San Francisco, watch the STARS Facebook page for updates from the conference.

It’s hard to believe how quickly my year as STARS Chair has passed. Since this is my last RUSA Update column, I want to take this opportunity to thank all the amazing STARS who have helped me move our section forward. I think we’ve accomplished great things this year and look forward to continuing our work as I transition to my role of Past Chair. Thank you so much!!

Tina Baich
STARS Chair 2014-2015

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BRASS Notes

John Gottfried, Editor

 

Message from the BRASS Chair

BRASS elections are coming up soon. Be on the lookout for the official ALA election emails. Once again we have a great group of candidates:

  • BRASS Vice-Chair / Chair Elect: Louise Feldmann and Michael Oppenheim
  • BRASS Member-at-Large: Jared Hoppenfeld and Penny Scott

There are also several BRASS members on the ballot for RUSA elections:

  • RUSA Vice-President / President-Elect:   Celia Ross
  • RUSA Director-at-Large: Jennifer Boettcher
  • Division Councilor: Sarah Hammill

Todd Hines
BRASS Chair 2014-2015
thines@princeton.edu

Call for BRASS Volunteers!

Calling all BRASS volunteers. Please considering serving our wonderful BRASS section. Committee positions will start after ALA Annual 2015 (San Francisco) and are generally for a two-year term. I hope you all will begin considering to serve on a committee again, or perhaps for the first time.

Here’s how to volunteer:

  • Visit http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/brass/committees to review the BRASS committees;
  • Go to http://www.ala.org/rusa/volunteer and login to the ALA website;
  • Select RUSA from the dropdown menu;
  • Fill out the initial form about yourself and your current ALA responsibilities;
  • Select RUSA_BRASS from the second drop down menu;
  • Indicate which committees you would like to help with.

You do not have to commit to traveling to conferences in order to volunteer. While some committees must meet in-person, many have virtual assignments, and some do all their work online. Most committee assignments last two years (there are exceptions) and begin and end after ALA Annual conference.

I’m looking forward to working with all of you in BRASS.

Best regards,

Paul Brother
BRASS Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect

Business Reference in Academic Libraries Committee

The BRASS Business Reference in Academic Libraries Committee recently conducted a virtual Midwinter conference meeting. The committee discussed the upcoming program at ALA annual. Charles Allan, the committee chair and editor of the BRASS newsletter, solicited submissions for the newsletter from those present. We also discussed program ideas for the 2016 conference.

Charles Allan, 2014-2015 Chair

Business Reference in Public Libraries Committee

The Business Reference in Public Libraries Committee Meeting was held Jan. 26, 2015 at 2:00pm ET. Among items discussed were:

  1. New Additions to the Public Librarians Briefcase.
  2. Details on this summers’ Forum, about new revenue streams for libraries, to be held Saturday, June 27, 1 – 230pm. The panel includes Deborah Doyle, current Development Director of the Friends of San Francisco Public Library, John Trischitti III, Director, Midland County Public Libraries and the Texas Library Association 2014 Librarian of the Year, and Jan Busa, Jan Busa, Management Analyst II, who set up the San Mateo Public Library passport Assistance Center. Ed Rossman, chair of the committee, will moderate. One more panelist is expected to speak on crowdfunding.
  3. Solutions to the problems faced by the IRS not issuing the quantities of paper tax forms they’ve done in the past.
  4. SmartMoney Week programming.

Ed Rossman, 2014-2015 Chair

Business Reference Services Discussion Group

The BRASS Discussion Group hosted a virtual discussion on November 21, 2014. Topics focused on providing support for entrepreneurs and small business development. Makerspaces were also discussed. The recording is available on ALA Connect. The BRASS Midwinter All Member Committee Meeting and Discussion Group took place on February 1, 2015. There were about 20 people present, and we had a lively discussion about vendor and resource updates.

Thank you to the committee members who have helped coordinate these discussions. The next virtual discussion of the BRASS Discussion Group will take place on February 20, 2015. We will be discussing faculty liaison work and e-book strategies.

Emily Treptow 2014-2016 Chair

Education Committee

The BRASS Education Committee has been busy working on several projects:

  • Editorial review of the new BRASS Business Guides is on the way. The estimated completion time is April 15th. The goal is to have an editorial team of at least two editors to work with a guide’s author to ensure currency and quality of the BRASS content.
  • We are about to start advertising the new RUSA BRASS preconference “Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs” at ALA Annual (http://alaac15.ala.org/ticketed-events Event Code RUS3). Take full advantage of the Early Bird rates before March 14th! Only $129 for RUSA members! Register here (http://alaac15.ala.org/register-now)
  • 2014 Best of the Best Business Websites were announced at the RUSA Book and Media Award Ceremony at the ALA Midwinter by Kelly LaVoice. The winners are Patent Lens http://www.bios.net/daisy/patentlens/patentlens.html, Intellectual Property Basics http://www.cfe.umich.edu/intellectual-property/, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office http://www.uspto.gov/. See the official press-release for more information: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2015/02/brass-best-best-business-websites-selected-business-reference-experts

Natasha Arguello, 2012-2015 Chair

Program Planning Committee
BRASS 2015 ALA Annual Program

Monday, June 29, 2015, 8:30-10:00 AM

A continental breakfast will be sponsored by S&P Capital IQ from 8 to 8:30 am.

“Not Elsewhere Classified”: Researching New and Niche Industries

How do librarians teach business students and entrepreneurs the research techniques for a budding industry or market? How do we help our clients get ahead of an emerging industry or a new idea? Learn from experts about how to locate and evaluate information on leading-edge industries, assess markets, and lead your clients in making strategic decisions when their business crosses traditional NAICS code boundaries or is part of a new field.

Speakers:

Laura Young | Founding Partner + CEO | Bizologie

Business Research Simplified

Laura Young is a seasoned expert in business research and competitive intelligence. Combining seven years leading the research department at Austin Ventures, four years coordinating the Reference and Information desk at the University of Texas Perry Casteneda Library and seven years honing her customer service expertise as a Walt Disney World Guest Services Supervisor, Laura can tackle any research project, in any industry, with grace and speed. She has performed Due Diligence analysis for HomeAway, RetailMeNot, MapMyFitness, Magnablend, Bazaarvoice, Silvercar, Spredfast, Food on the Table, Delta Rigging & Tools, among many others. She is a highly sought after speaker on emerging research trends and regularly presents for Texas Library Association, Special Libraries Association, and American Library Association.

When she’s not digging for the next important piece of data, Laura can be found relaxing with her Basset Hound and PBGV rescues, catching up on the latest episodes of Mad Men, or culling design ideas from local architectural tours.

Amelia Kassel | President + Owner | MarketingBase

Research is your first step

Amelia Kassel is president and owner of MarketingBase, a global business research firm since 1982, specializing in industry, company and competitive and market intelligence research. Amelia holds a master’s degree in library science (UCLA) and combines expertise about the Internet and electronic databases with knowledge of business and marketing strategies. A recognized author and international speaker, Amelia conducts seminars for associations and conferences and gives workshops onsite for companies and organizations. She is also known for her successful one-on-one email-based Mentor Program in which she trains business searchers how to conduct research and aspiring independent information professionals how to develop to successfully develop and grow their businesses.

Diane Campbell, 2014-2015 Chair

Publications and Communications Committee

The Publications and Communications committee will be meeting shortly after the BRASS Chairs meeting. The Publications and Communications Committee will be putting together a preliminary draft of the BRASS ALA Annual 2015 Schedule of Events in March. The P&C Committee will be soliciting committee chairs for their program and meeting information via a Google web form, as we did last year. This draft version will not have as much information as the final version, but will be a means to notify BRASS members well in advance of ALA Annual about the types of programming available. The preliminary draft schedule should make it easier in piecing together the final schedule in May/early June.

Chad Boeninger, 2014-2015 Chair

Vendor Relations

The Committee worked with Todd Hines to arrange for the annual breakfast sponsorship with S&P Capital IQ at the 2015 ALA Annual.

Chris LeBeau, 2014-2015 Chair

Gale Cengage Learning Student Travel Award Committee

Sponsored by Gale Cengage Learning, this $1,250 monetary prize is given to a student enrolled in an ALA accredited master’s degree program to fund travel to and attendance at the ALA Annual Conference and a one-year membership in the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of RUSA. At this writing, the committee is still accepting applications through Sunday, February 8, 2015. Watch for RUSA to announce the 2015 award recipient in March!

Michael Oppenheim, 2014-2015 Chair

Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award Committee

The award committee was pleased to receive several nominations of public librarians providing excellent business reference support for their communities. The committee selected Barbara Alvarez, Business Liaison Librarian at the Barrington Area Library in Barrington, Illinois, as this year’s recipient of the BRASS Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award. Ms. Alvarez works with business persons in her area both individually and in partnership with a number of local organizations, offering training in business research, job seeking, and creating podcasts and websites. We are delighted that she will be present to participate in BRASS activities at the ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

Karen Chapman, 2014-2015 Chair

Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award Committee

Grace Liu, Business Reference Librarian at University of Maine, is the recipient of the RUSA BRASS Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award. Ms. Liu’s background in industry has allowed her to leverage a recent education in librarianship to help her constituents. Projects in her first year as a business librarian include library instruction to classes and local small business, design of a library 101 class for first year business students, development of an embedded library service model, and creation of a student advisory committee. We wish Ms. Liu all the best in her new career and hope that this travel grant for the ALA annual meeting will help her to enhance the development of her career and to further contribute to the profession of business librarianship.

Julia A. Martin, 2014-2015 Chair

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RSS

Amy Rustic, Editor                         

RSS logo

Message from the Chair:

Hello Everyone,

Chicago rolled out the snowy carpet for Midwinter! And while the weather was not always agreeable, RSS was active with discussion forums, committee meetings, and the annual Pancake Breakfast. I’m sure the weather in San Francisco will be slightly warmer.

Are you interested in becoming involved in an RSS committee or representing RSS on a RUSA-level committee? Now is the time to volunteer. Crystal Lentz, RSS Vice Chair, will be starting the appointment process shortly. Here is the form to note your interest in volunteering: http://www.ala.org/cfapps/committee/volunteerform . If you have questions or would like to learn more about RSS and its committees, please feel free to contact me at q-johnson[at]northwestern[dot]edu or Crystal Lentz at crystal[dot]lentz[at]sos[dot]wa[dot]gov . Want to learn what committee might be the best fit for you? Check out the RSS committees through ALA Connect to learn about ongoing work and future projects.

Keep an eye out for information about the RSS and RUSA sponsored programs and discussion forums at Annual!

Qiana Johnson
q-johnson[at]northwestern[dot]edu
RSS Chair, 2014-2015

 

RSS Honor Roll

When you hear Honor Roll do you have flashbacks to high school? Maybe you have happy memories of the honor roll or maybe you think could of, would of, should of…

Regardless of your experience in high school, you may be eligible for the RSS Honor Roll.

The RSS has an Honor Roll that gives recognition to active RSS members who have served the section in three different capacities since its inception.

If you have been a member of three or more committees or discussion groups since RSS was established in 2004 and have not previously been added to the honor roll, please send your name and a list of the three ways you have served RSS to Sarah Hammill at hammills@fiu.edu

Not only will you become a member of this esteemed group, you will also be recognized at ALA Annual in San Francisco!

Join the RSS Honor Roll today

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

 

Message from the Chair

Dear STARS Members and Friends,

At Midwinter, I once again witnessed our engaged, thoughtful, and hard-working STARS members. We had interesting conversations during the Discussion Groups and accomplished a great deal in our committee meetings. Our annual free workshop, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL,” had close to 60 attendees. I’d like to extend a big thank you to the University of Chicago Regenstein Library for hosting the event!

If you aren’t a STARS member and have an interest in resource sharing, I would encourage you to join our amazing community of knowledge and support. If you have questions about what STARS does, feel free to contact me at cbaich@iupui.edu.

For you current STARS members, Vice-Chair Tom Bruno is gearing up for the committee appointment process. You can contact him at tom.bruno@yale.edu to express your interest in serving on a STARS committee or as a STARS representative to a RUSA committee.

I’m already looking forward to seeing all of you in San Francisco!

Tina Baich
STARS Chair 2014-2015

 

Research and Assessment Committee

The Research and Assessment Committee has finalized the speakers for the pre-conference at ALA Annual 2015. The preconference will be held on that Friday, from 9AM-12PM. We are working on marketing the workshop. The presenters will include:

Kerri Goergen-Doll
Oregon State University
Resource Acquisition and Sharing Director
kerri.goergen-doll@oregonstate.edu

Heidi Nance
University of Washington
Head, ILL and Document Delivery
hnance@uw.edu

Collette Mak
University of Notre Dame
Outreach and Scholarly Communications Librarian
cmak@nd.edu

Tom Bruno
Yale University
Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves
tom.bruno@yale.edu

Krista Higham
Millersville University
Access Services Librarian
krista.higham@millersville.edu

Sue Kaler
Massachusetts Library System
ILL Manager
sue@masslibsystem.org

Micquel Little
Claremont University
Director of User Services and Resource Sharing
micquel_little@cuc.claremont.edu

Bethany Sewell, Chair

Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee

The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee continues to review and revise the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States and its Explanatory Supplement. Feedback from the October 2014 survey has greatly informed our discussions and decision-making. We are on target to have first drafts ready for the STARS Board and RUSA Standards and Guidelines Committee by April/May 2015, and we project that approved drafts will be ready for general comment by the ILL community in late summer/early Fall. By request of the STARS Education and Training Committee, we are also reviewing and updating the ShareILL Codes and Guidelines web page.

Brian Miller, Chair

Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee

The STARS Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee received 30 nominations and, after careful evaluation, have chosen a winner. The STARS Executive Board has approved the choice and we are waiting for RUSA to make the official announcement, before we promote our selection of the nominee.

Amy Paulus, Chair

Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee

STARS Policies met at Midwinter to discuss the revised Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative Star Checklist. The revised version was approved by the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative Steering Committee and the STARS Executive Committee. We also discussed the logistics of mounting the new checklist, publicizing it and training with it and making data from it more available and useful to the greater resource sharing community.

Sue Kaler, Chair

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BRASS Notes

John Gottfried, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

Planning for Midwinter in Chicago is underway. As a reminder, there are no required committee meetings at Midwinter. BRASS will hold an all-member meeting, which includes time for an open-floor business topics discussion. It will be held on Sunday, February 1 from 8:30 to 10:00 AM. BRASS discussions and committee work will continue virtually as well during the Midwinter period. Please read the committee reports below for updates on current planning and initiatives.

Our Vice Chair Paul Brothers will be sending out a call for BRASS committee volunteers in the near future. These appointments will start after Annual 2015. The call will go out on BRASS-L, so please join the BRASS-L listserv if you aren’t already subscribed and watch for the notice. Members are not required to attend conferences in order to participate on committees.

Please contact me if you have BRASS-related questions or ideas.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Chicago.

Todd Hines
BRASS Chair 2014-2015
thines@princeton.edu

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CODES

Barry Trott, editor

 

Chair’s Note

The CODES Board will not hold meetings at ALA Midwinter in Chicago, but will be meeting virtually prior to and following Midwinter.

We encourage all CODES and RUSA members to make plans to attend RUSA’s Book and Media Awards Reception on Sunday evening during ALA-Midwinter. At this time, award winners will be announced for numerous awards that CODES committees are currently working on, including Notable Books, Sophie Brody, Reading List, Dartmouth, Best Reference Books, and others.

Anyone interested in getting involved in CODES should fill out the committee volunteer form to indicate their interest in serving. Many CODES committees are now virtual, so opportunities may exist for participating that were not available in the past. Anyone with questions about appointments to CODES committees should check with Edward Kownslar, CODES Vice Chair/Chair-Elect if you have any questions (Edward.Kownslar@tamucc.edu). More information is available on the CODES web site: http://ww.ala.org/rusa/sections/codes/section.

 

Deborah Abston, CODES Chair, 2014-15

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MARS: Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS)

Chanitra Bishop, Editor

 

Message from the Chair of MARS

Greetings!

ALA Midwinter is fast approaching. MARS: Emerging Technologies section will have meetings and a great set of discussion groups. Below is a tentative schedule of events. Locations to be announced later.

I encourage you to attend one or more of our engaging discussion groups. It’s a great way to see the work of our MARS Committees. If you are interested in joining MARS, we’d love to have you! Let us know at ALA MidWinter, fill out the RUSA volunteer form located on the RUSA website, or email Donna Scanlon (djbrearcliffe@gmail.com).

 

Overview of MARS Events at ALA MidWinter 2015

SATURDAY, January 31, 2015

MARS Planning Committee
8:30 – 10:00 am
MARS Executive Committee Meeting I
10:15 – 11:30 am

Virtual Reference Discussion Group: Online Chat Services
4:30 – 5:30 pm

RUSA Membership Social
5:30 – 7:00 pm

SUNDAY, February 1, 2015

MARS Discussion Group: Assessing Integration of Library Services into Course Management Systems
8:30 – 10:00 am

Hot Topics Discussion Group: Augmented Reality
1:00 – 2:30 pm

MONDAY, February 2, 2015

MARS Executive Committee Meeting II
8:30 – 11:30 am

 

Sessions @ Midwinter

Talking Chat: The Good, the Bad, and the “What Were We Thinking?”!
The RUSA MARS: Virtual Reference Discussion Group will be holding a forum on January 31st, 2015 from 4:30-5:30 pm in McCormick Place West w474a. The forum topics will be focused on online chat services and known issues, characteristics of successful and unsuccessful implementations, and more. Panelists will share their experiences with online chat services and participates will have an opportunity to ask questions. If you are considering implementing online chat services in your library or you would like to learn more about what has worked and not worked for other libraries, this is an opportunity to gain insight on how other libraries are implementing their online chat services. Moderators of the forum will be Jessica Cerny (Chair) and Matt Torrence (Member at Large).

Management of Electronic Resources & Services
Join the MARS Management of Electronic Resources & Services Panel Discussion at Midwinter 2015 in Chicago on Sunday, February 1, 8:30-10:00am: Assessing Integration of Library Services into Course Management Systems: Where We Stand Now

Our panel of presenters will engage the audience in a group discussion of best practices for implementing and assessing a robust library presence in the CMS environment. The attendees will benefit from an exploration of the challenges and advantages of integrating library services into university-wide systems and platforms.

Hot Topics in Emerging Tech

You’ve heard of Oculus Rift and you’ve seen Google Glass. What are libraries doing with augmented reality? It’s time to move beyond QR codes!

Join us for a Hot Topics session to learn about new and successful augmented reality projects in libraries – and bring your questions, ideas, and cool tech toys for discussion and Q&A! Hot Topics will meet on Sunday, February 1, from 1-2:30pm at Midwinter. See you there!

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RSS

RSS logo

Amy Rustic, Editor  

  

Message from the Chair

Things are starting to ramp up in preparation for Midwinter. And while Chicago can be cold in late-January, it’s a fantastic place to visit. And I’m not just saying that because I live here. There will be a number of signature RUSA programs and networking events, as well as opportunities to meet or get to know other RSS members. Be sure to stop by the RUSA Social on Saturday, January 31 from 5:30-7:00 pm to meet other RUSA members, learn a bit about RUSA and the sections, and do some general networking. Also join us for what is becoming a great tradition–the RSS Pancake Breakfast. Look for details on both events coming soon on the RSS-L list.

Midwinter is also a time for business meetings. On Friday of the conference, the RUSA Board will be meeting to begin strategic planning for RUSA for the coming years. The planning will be led by the Board, but there will be many opportunities for input by the membership. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me. I welcome the opportunity to bring forward the ideas of RSS members.

I look forward to seeing you at Midwinter!

Qiana Johnson
q-johnson@northwestern.edu
RSS Chair, 2014-2015

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

 

Message from the Chair

Dear STARS,

Our committees have made great progress on important projects this fall. An Ad Hoc Website Review Committee has been working to inventory and update the STARS website. My hope is that the end result will be a more useful and easily navigable website for our members. The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee is still hard at work revising the Interlibrary Loan Code for the U.S. Thanks to those who provided input by responding to the Committee’s recent survey. If you didn’t respond, don’t worry! There will be additional opportunities for feedback in the coming year.

Our awards committees are just beginning their work and are awaiting your nominations for the Virginia Boucher OCLC Distinguished ILL Librarian Award (http://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/boucher) and the STARS / Atlas Systems Mentoring Award (http://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/mentoring).

Midwinter will be here before you know it as will STARS’ annual FREE workshop, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL,” presented by the Education and Training Committee. This year’s workshop will be held at the University of Chicago Regenstein Library on Friday, January 30, 2015, 8:30am-12:30pm. If you would like to attend, please register at http://stars.hosts.atlas-sys.com/.

If you are attending Midwinter, please join your fellow STARS at the ILL Discussion Group (January 31, 10:30-11:30am) and the Hot Topics Discussion Group (January 31, 4:30-5:30pm). The Hot Topics Discussion Group will be focused on shared collections so come with your questions and ideas to share with the group. STARS is a section built on networking and sharing, and the discussion groups offer a great opportunity for both.

I hope to see many STARS at Midwinter and encourage you to come up and introduce yourself if we haven’t yet met!

Hoping to see you in Chicago,

Tina Baich

STARS Chair 2014-2015

 

 

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BRASS Notes

John C. Gottfried, Editor

 

Message from the Chair

Hello BRASS members:

Once again we enjoyed a full slate of programming at ALA Annual. Las Vegas may have been hot and inconvenient, but it was productive for BRASS committees, as seen in the reports below, and it was a great location for our social events. I enjoyed visiting with everyone at the Friday Member Reception, the Awards Ceremony, and the Monday Dinner; I found the BRASS Discussion Group as enlightening as always; and the Preconference, Academic Forum, and Publisher’s Forum were all well-attended and helped make the trip to the desert worthwhile. There was also an update from the BRASS/RUSA working group on guidelines for financial literacy education in libraries, and the BRASS Program “Mad Men: The Business of Advertising” was a conference highlight.

BRASS continues to boast the best programming, best vendor support, and best people in all of ALA. Every organization has plenty of what I think of as “back seat volunteers.” BRASS is an organization of “front seat volunteers” and it’s been a happiness for me to work with all of you during my year as Chair. Now, with Todd Hines taking the lead, I look forward to another great year for BRASS!

Andy Spackman
BRASS Chair, 2013-2014
andy_spackman@byu.edu

Dear BRASS members:

I just wanted to briefly introduce myself, I’m currently BRASS Chair and my term runs through ALA Annual San Francisco. I also wanted to thank Andy for his service as Chair. BRASS is a strong, active organization because of all the hard work of its volunteers. Additionally, I wanted to remind everyone that there are no required BRASS Committee meetings at 2015 ALA Midwinter in Chicago (committees now meet virtually instead of at Midwinter).

I look forward to working with all of you over the next year.

Todd Hines
BRASS Chair 2013-2014
thines@princeton.edu

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MARS: Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS)

Cathy Larson, Editor

Message from the Chair

MARS: Emerging Technology in Reference Section is looking forward to an exciting year of programming and service. The Section recently submitted our section review to RUSA and it was favorably received. The Executive Committee and Planning Committees will be reviewing recommendations over the coming year and working on changes to further the mission of MARS: Emerging Technologies in Reference Section.

Congrats are well deserved for our newly elected members.

Vice-Chair/Chair –Elect – Donna Scanlon

Secretary (two-year term) – Chanitra Bishop

Member-At-Large (three-year term) – Matt Torrence

Our members hosted a suite of excellent programs and discussion groups during ALA Annual 2014 in Las Vegas, NV.

Management of Electronic Resources Committee sponsored “Libraries in the Course Management System: Best Practices and New Directions,” to a standing room only crowd in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Panelists shared their experiences with integrating library resources in various systems and the audience participated in a lively discussion.

The MARS Chair’s Program began by honoring Anne Houston, this year’s recipient of the MARS Achievement Recognition Award (My Favorite Martian). After the presentation, 150 participants gathered to hear, Angela Zoss, Data Visualization Coordinator, Duke University and Josh Boyer, Head, User Experience, North Carolina State University present their perspectives and experiences with data visualization in a session entitled “New Directions for Data Visualization in Library Public Services.”

At the Virtual Reference Discussion Group, a group of dedicated folks demonstrated the Virtual Reference Companion, a resource for those implementing or managing virtual reference services. Be sure to check out this wonderfully helpful resource at http://www.ala.org/rusa/vrc

The Hot Topics Discussion Group met on Sunday to discuss makerspaces in libraries. Participants heard from several librarians engaged in makerspaces activities and even played with some 3D objects.

The MARS Happy Hour at Firefly provided an opportunity for members, new and old, to enjoy each others’ company and learn about MARS in a relaxed, friendly environment.

The last event of Sunday evening was the RUSA Awards Reception and Volunteer Appreciation Party at Caesars Palace. Our very own Anne Houston was presented with the MARS Achievement Recognition Award (My Favorite Martian). Thank you to Anne for all her hard work and dedication to MARS over the years.

We welcome your participation in MARS: Emerging Technologies in Reference.   If you would like to know more about MARS or are interested volunteering for a committee, please contact Stephanie Graves (stephgraves3@gmail.com)

 

Stephanie Graves
MARS Chair, 2014-2015

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RSS

Amy Rustic, Editor   

RSS_Logo

  

Message from the Chair

Greetings RSS Members!

I am thrilled to start my year as Chair of RSS. It was great to see so many new and returning faces at the RSS Open House and All-Committee meeting. Our third trivia contest stoked the competitive fires of the group. Thanks to Sarah Hammill and Marjorie Lear for pulling questions and prizes together. Thanks also go to Ann Brown who so ably led the section as Chair last year.

RSS has been my home within ALA and RUSA for many years in large part due to the work of its committees and the people involved. RSS organizes informative and lively discussion forums and programs, many of which are described below. It also contributes to the profession through its creation and maintenance of guidelines. I know this year will be just as productive.

Be sure to stay in the loop with RSS activities and programs through the RSS listerv (rss-l@ala.org); the RSS Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/rss.rusa ); and the RSS ALA Connect page (http://connect.ala.org/rusa_rss). Also, all RSS committees have a page on ALA Connect where they highlight their activities and programs. Be sure to take a look and see if there is something you’d like to become involved in.

Finally, congratulations our newly elected leaders: Crystal Lentz, Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Cathay Keough, Member-at-Large, and Tom Reinsfelder, Secretary. I look forward to working with all of you in the next year!

If you have any questions about RSS, don’t hesitate to ask!

Qiana Johnson
q-johnson@northwestern.edu
RSS Chair, 2014-2015

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

 

Message from the Chair

Hello All,

STARS had a very eventful ALA Annual in Las Vegas. In addition to terrific programming and discussion groups, the section celebrated its 10th Anniversary. It was a wonderful party and a great opportunity for our members to connect. Nearly every STARS Chair – past, present, and future – was in attendance, and it was a great visual representation of our history. My sincere thanks to the planning committee that put together the event! My additional thanks to Past Chair Nora Dethloff for her leadership throughout 2013-2014.

Photo: Past, present and future chairs of STARS at the 10th Anniversary Party – Tom Bruno, Tina Baich, Nora Dethloff, David Atkins, Heather Weltin, Sherri Michaels, Denise Forro, Margaret Ellingson, Tanner Wray, Mary Hollerich. Photo taken by Joe Thompson, RUSA President.
Photo: Past, present and future chairs of STARS at the 10th Anniversary Party – Tom Bruno, Tina Baich, Nora Dethloff, David Atkins, Heather Weltin, Sherri Michaels, Denise Forro, Margaret Ellingson, Tanner Wray, Mary Hollerich. Photo taken by Joe Thompson, RUSA President.

 

There is much more to come for STARS this year as we work to provide professional development opportunities and helpful resources to our members and the resource sharing community at large. Here are just a few of our plans for the coming year.

  • The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee will be working diligently on the revision of the ILL Code for the United States. We’ll be looking for feedback from the resource sharing community at some point in the process, and I encourage you to participate.
  • The Education & Training Committee will once again be providing the FREE “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL” workshop at ALA Midwinter. Watch the e-mail discussion lists for details.
  • The ILL Committee is planning an ALA Annual 2015 program titled “Acquisitions, Collection Development, Electronic Resources, and Interlibrary Loan, Oh My!: Connecting Users to What They Want!” I think this is a timely program as the lines between collection development and resource sharing continue to blur.
  • The Research & Assessment Committee is planning an ALA Annual 2015 pre-conference focused on ILL data, a topic that is always a big hit with our resource sharing colleagues!

Though I’ve been placed at the helm of STARS, I obviously can’t do all this alone. Luckily for me, our section has the most engaged and dedicated members I’ve ever encountered in a professional organization. I’m excited to begin my year as STARS Chair and look forward to working with each of you as we move STARS forward!

Many thanks and best regards,

Tina Baich
STARS Chair 2014-2015

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BRASS Notes

Carol L. Schuetz, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

Hello BRASS!

As shown in the committee reports below, everyone is gearing up for the ALA Annual Conference. There’s fresh snow on the mountains here in Utah, so spending ALA in Las Vegas is sounding pretty good to me right now.

Here’s a list of some of the BRASS events to look forward to:

Also at Annual we’ll officially recognize this year’s recipients of the BRASS awards and grants at the RUSA Awards Ceremony and Reception:

  • Celia Ross, Gale Cengage Learning Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship
  • Ilana Barnes and Tao Zhang, BRASS Emerald Research Grant
  • Desirae Zingarelli-Sweet, Business Expert Press Award for Academic Business Librarians
  • Katharine Macy, Gale Cengage Learning Student Travel Award

Keep an eye out on BRASS-L for the full BRASS program/event guide. I hope to see you all in Las Vegas!

Andy Spackman
BRASS Chair, 2013-2014
andy_spackman@byu.edu

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CODES

Barry Trott, Editor

Message from the Chair
Like many other sections, CODES is gearing up for ALA Annual. We are looking forward to successful programs. This year’s Literary Tastes event will be held on Sunday, June 29 from 8:00-10:00 AM at the Las Vegas Convention Center, room N258 and will feature Daniel J. Brown, Tessa Dare, and V.E. Schwab. Vice Chair Deb Abston is a busy filling committee appointment openings. Anyone interested in serving on a CODES committee should visit the CODES Committee Roster page to learn more about individual committees. CODES board members met last month to discuss possible program submissions for the 2015 Annual conference. We had two wonderful programs and hope that we can see both of them in San Francisco.

Asia Gross
CODES chair

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MARS: Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section

Cathy Larson, Editor
Join the discussion at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/mars-l

Message From the Chair
Annual Conference time is almost here, and I hope to see many of you in Las Vegas! The Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) has two programs and three discussion forums planned as well as several committee meetings, so mark your calendars and we hope to see you often. If you haven’t tried out the ALA Scheduler, I recommend it. ALA will keep this service up-to-date to reflect last minute room changes, and they monitor the site and may add seats to events where they see high advance demand.

Friday, start out with RUSA 101: Network, Get Oriented, Get Involved. This is a fun orientation and get-together. It will be on Friday, June 27, 2014 from 3:00-4:00 P.M. at Las Vegas Convention Center, room S222.

Saturday morning, June 28, from 8:30-10:00 AM, the All Committee Meeting will be in Bally’s, Skyview 4. If you’re on a committee already, this is your primary meeting time. If you’re a member who can volunteer to help with the work of the section, this is a chance to stop by, talk with the committee chairs and members in one location, and find a committee that fits your interests.

Next up on Saturday, our Management of Electronic Resources Committee is sponsoring “Libraries in the Course Management System: Best Practices and New Directions,” held in the Las Vegas Convention Center, room N263C from 10:30-11:30 A.M. for what is sure to be a lively conversation.

Saturday afternoon from 1:00-2:30 PM will be the MARS Chair’s Program at the Las Vegas Convention Center N263C. We will begin by honoring Anne Houston, this year’s recipient of the MARS Achievement Recognition Award (My Favorite Martian). Then we have two great speakers lined up, Angela Zoss, Data Visualization Coordinator, Duke University and Josh Boyer, Head, User Experience, North Carolina State University. They will present their perspectives and experiences with data visualization in a session called “New Directions for Data Visualization in Library Public Services.”

Capping off Saturday, from 3:00-4:00 PM in the Las Vegas Convention Center, room S228 will be “Discovering Open Access Articles: Maximum Access, Maximum Visibility!,” co-sponsored with ALCTS and ACRL.

On Sunday, June 29, join us for our Planning Committee meeting from 8:30-10:00 AM at the Las Vegas Hotel in the Boardroom. If you are interested in observing the work and possibly volunteering for a committee for the coming year, please join us.

Sunday from 10:30-11:30 A.M. in the Paris Chablis room will be the Virtual Reference Discussion Group of Houston Libraries. Sunday from 1:00-2:30 P.M., at the Convention Center, Exhibit Hall, Meeting Room C, the Hot Topics Discussion Group will host a forum.

And the last event of Sunday evening will be the RUSA Awards Reception and Volunteer Appreciation Party from 5:00-6:30 P.M. at Caesars Palace, Florentine II-IV.

On Monday, June 30, if you’re still in town, plan to stop by our MARS Executive Committee Meeting from 8:30-10:00 A.M. at the Las Vegas Convention Center, room N202. The meeting is where MARS Committee and Discussion Forum chairs, as well as MARS representatives to RUSA level committees share their activities of the last six months and their upcoming plans. We are meeting jointly with the RSS Executive Committee for the last hour (this meeting will be in N102) to coordinate activities of our two sections.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to volunteer, please go to http://www.ala.org/rusa/volunteer, or contact Stephanie Graves, Vice Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) at stephaniegraves@library.tamu.edu.

For those of you who have already volunteered, thanks for all your contributions to MARS and MARS members this year. You are making a difference. It’s been an affirming experience to be Chair this year and have the opportunity to work with such an outstanding group of Librarians.

Best,

Sam Stormont
srstormont@widener.edu
Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) 2013-2014

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RSS Review

RSS logo
Amy Rustic, Editor

Message from the Chair
I’m hoping that spring has finally sprung here in the Mid-Atlantic. This is the first time in ten years that I’ve seen the tulips last until May.

Our Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Qiana Johnson (q-johnson@northwestern.edu), has been hard at work appointing people to committees. Thanks Qiana! We may have a few openings left, so if you’re interested, drop her a line!

I would like to thank you all for voting in the ALA Elections. Congratulations to our incoming Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect Crystal Lentz, Cathay Keough, our new Member-at-Large, and Tom Reinsfelder RSS’ Secretary. We look forward to your leadership in the coming years.

If you’re heading to Annual, make sure to come by the RSS Open House on Saturday, June 28, starting at 8:30 AM in the Flamingo Las Vegas (Laughlin II). We’ll once again be having our trivia contest and breakfast hosted by EBSCO. Our raffle consists of three $75 bookstore gift certificates and an RUSA/RSS Membership. The Open House is more than just fun and games though; it’s a chance to find out about all the different committees within RSS and the work we do.

We’ll be posting our sessions on Facebook and via RSS-L shortly.

See you in Vegas!

Ann Brown
RSS Chair, 2013-2014
agbrown@gwu.edu

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Message from the Chair
Hello STARS Members and Friends,

STARS is turning 10! This year marks 10 years of networking, education, and research in support of resource sharing and access services professionals. Much thanks is due to everyone whose involvement has made STARS so successful for the past decade. To honor everyone who has made STARS what it is today, we’ll be hosting a 10th Anniversary Party at ALA Annual in Las Vegas! Please join us Friday June 27, 7:00-9 PM, at Bahama Breeze Island Grille, 375 Hughes Center Drive, Las Vegas.

STARS is also sponsoring two informative programs at ALA Annual. Code4ILL:How to Grow Your Own Innovation for Resource Sharing is on Saturday, June 28, from 1:00-2:30 PM in the Las Vegas Convention Center, room S228. Finding Dead People: Genealogy and Local History Resources for the ILL Practitioner is on Saturday, June 28, from 3:00-4:00 PM, in the Las Vegas Convention Center, room N232.

You can check out our other upcoming events on the STARS Events page on Facebook.

If you can’t make it to Vegas there are still lots of opportunities to become involved in STARS. Many of our committees offer virtual participation, and we’re always looking for active virtual members. For more information on our committees and volunteer opportunities, check out STARS’ committees page.Feel free to contact me at ndethloff@uh.edu for more info or answers.

This is my last update column as STARS Chair. It’s been an eventful, fun, and—above all—educational year as chair. I’ll take this opportunity to say a loud “Thank You!” to the wonderful members of STARS who have done such great work in the past year (and, indeed, the past 10 years). STARS really is a fantastic organization filled with hard working people, and I’m so thankful that I’ve gotten to play this role. Thanks to all of you!

Nora Dethloff
STARS Chair, 2013-14

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BRASS Notes

Carol L. Schuetz, Editor

Message from the BRASS Chair

Hello BRASS Members!

Even though official BRASS meetings are conducted online for Midwinter, some of us can’t seem to stay away from the conference and it was a pleasure to see many of you in Philadelphia. I caught up with some friends while eating delicious (and sometimes peculiar) food, took care of some business during chance meetings in the convention center halls, and was enlightened and entertained by the conversation at the BRASS Discussion Group, as always.

At the RUSA Book & Media Awards Ceremony in Philadelphia, BRASS recognized the Outstanding Business Reference Sources for 2013, selected by the Sources Committee, and the Best of the Best Business Websites for 2013, selected by the Education Committee. The annual BRASS individual awards and research grants are being finalized now. Keep an eye out for the official announcement of winners from RUSA.

BRASS elections are coming up—look for the official ALA emails. We have a fine slate of candidates:

  • Vice-Chair: Paul Brothers and Julia Martin
  • Member-at-Large: Jason Dewland and Patricia Kenly
  • Secretary: Natasha Arguello and Adele Barsh

As you can see from the committee reports that follow, vendor support for BRASS remains strong. We appreciate our vendors for their sponsorship and for their eagerness for our input on their products, services, and practices. Work also continues on the IMLS grant for financial literacy education in libraries, with solid BRASS representation. Expect to see guidelines issued later this year.

Upcoming programming from BRASS includes:

  • Two more virtual discussion groups before Annual Conference (TBA)
  • The four-part MBA in a Day webinar series (http://www.ala.org/rusa/development/onlinece):
    • Marketing: Andy Spackman, Thursday, March 20, 12:00-1:30 PM (Central Time)
    • Management: Elisabeth Leonard, Friday, April 4, 11:00-12:30 PM (Central Time)
    • Accounting: Todd Hines, Thursday, May 1, 2:00-3:30 PM (Central Time)
    • Finance: Shikha Sharma, Thursday, May 15, 2:00-3:30 (Central Time)
  • At Annual in Las Vegas:
    • Preconference: How Business Librarians Support Entrepreneurs
    • Academic Libraries Forum: Business Information Literacy Instruction: Scalability, Assessment, and Philosophy
    • Publishers Forum: Hitting the Jackpot: Sources for Local and Regional Business Information
    • Traditional BRASS Discussion Group
    • The BRASS Annual Program: Mad Men: The Business of Advertising
    • And don’t forget our Friday night members’ reception and Monday night dinner!

Andy Spackman
BRASS Chair, 2013-2014
andy_spackman@byu.edu

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CODES

Barry Trott, Editor

Message from the Chair
During the CODES Board Midwinter Virtual Meeting, several actions were taken. The Listen List Manual was updated to reflect some important changes. The Board also approved a new charge for the Collection Development, Planning, Education and Assessment, which is now available on the committee’s webpage. Deb Abston (vice-chair) is hard at work on committee appointments. If you know anyone interested in serving feel free to contact her. The Board has decided to look into the possibility of offering a webinar with the $1500 allotted for recruitment and development of members. Overall everyone is looking forward to Annual 2014. CODES would love to see more attendance at the Association of American University Press’ (AAUP) “The Best of the Best from University Presses: Books You Should Know About,” program on Sunday June 29 at 1:00 PM. It’s a great opportunity to win some great books and be on C-SPAN.

Asia Gross
CODES Chair

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MARS: Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section

Cathy Larson, Editor
Join the discussion at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/mars-l

Message from the Chair

Greetings!

Annual Conference time is coming up soon, and I hope to see many of you in Las Vegas! I know I’m certainly looking forward to some warmer weather! The Emerging Technologies in Reference Group (MARS) has three discussion forums and one program planned as well as several committee meetings and a Happy Hour, so mark your calendars and we hope to see you often.

In addition, RUSA has a President’s program as well as an orientation, so there are lots of ways to get involved, learn more, and network with your colleagues. If you haven’t tried out the ALA Scheduler, I recommend it. ALA will keep this service up-to-date to reflect last minute room changes, and they monitor the site and may add seats to events where they see high advance demand.

On Saturday morning, June 29, from 8:30-10:00 AM, join us for our all-committee meeting. If you’re on a committee already, this is your primary meeting time. If you’re a member who can volunteer to help with the work of the section, this is a chance to stop by, talk with the committee chairs and members in one location, and find a committee that fits your interests.

Next up, our Management of Electronic Resources Committee is sponsoring a discussion forum. Please join us from 10:30-11:30 AM and keep an eye on your email for further details.

Saturday afternoon from 1:00-2:30 PM will be the MARS Chair’s Program. We will begin by honoring Anne Houston, this year’s recipient of the MARS Achievement Recognition Award. Then we have three great speakers lined up who will address the topic of Data Visualization.

Our Virtual Reference Discussion Group forum will also be held later Saturday afternoon, with the exact time to be finalized soon.

Capping off Saturday, from 4:00-5:30 PM, will be the RUSA President’s Program.

On Sunday, June 30, the Planning Committee will meet from 8:30-10:00 AM and on Sunday afternoon, from 1:00-2:30 PM, our Hot Topics Discussion Forum will be held.

Please join us late Sunday afternoon for the RUSA Awards Reception and Volunteer Appreciation Party from 5:00-6:30 PM.

On Monday, if you’re still in town, plan to stop by our MARS Executive Committee Meeting from 8:30-11:30 AM. The meeting is where MARS Committee and Discussion Forum chairs, as well as MARS representatives to RUSA level committees share their activities of the last six months and their upcoming plans. We are meeting jointly with the RSS Executive Committee for the last hour to coordinate activities of our two sections.

Locations for all events will be finalized and available next month.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to volunteer, please go to http://www.ala.org/rusa/volunteer, or contact Stephanie Graves, Vice Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) at stephaniegraves@library.tamu.edu.

For those of you who have already volunteered, thank you for all your contributions to MARS and MARS members this year. You are making a difference.

Sam Stormont
MARS Chair, 2012-2013
srstormont@widener.edu

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RSS Review

RSS logo

 

 

Message from the Chair:

Hello Everyone!

Who knew that we had such a big winter in store? I’m counting on seeing more hints of spring shortly, as the robins are descending once again on the DC Metro Area.

RSS had a great ALA Midwinter, with five well-attended Discussion Groups and an amazing Fourth Annual Pancake Breakfast. But the overall high achiever was our MARS co-hosted workshop, “Collaboration: Spaces & Services,” with a whopping ninety attendees! Way to go RSS & MARS Education and Professional Development.

As March begins to fade away, don’t forget that this is the time to sign-up for Committees! Our Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, Qiana Johnson, is looking for a few good volunteers. To get involved, please complete the RUSA Volunteer form. If you have questions or would like to learn more about RSS and its committees, please feel free to contact me at agbrown@gwu.edu or Qiana at q-johnson@northwestern.edu.

I look forward to hearing from you all as we begin the race to Annual and Las Vegas. And keep your eyes peeled for the first signs of spring!

Ann Brown
RSS Chair, 2013-2014
agbrown@gwu.edu

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STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

Message from the Chair

Hello STARS Members and Friends,

I can’t believe my tenure as Chair is halfway over already! As usual, STARS has been an active section with a lot going on. Thank you to everyone whose hard work has helped us to offer webinars, programs, standards, and other practical tools. At our recent meetings in Philadelphia for ALA Midwinter, I was reminded of just how creative, clever, and hard-working STARS members are. It’s the involvement of great resource sharing and access services practitioners that keeps us one of the most interesting and vital sections in ALA—I may be a bit biased.

If you’re not already a member of STARS, please consider joining. Not only is the section doing great work, but its members are some of the friendliest and most knowledgeable folks you’d ever want to network with, and provides great opportunities for making connections, building resumes, and learning from experts in our field. Feel free to contact me (ndethloff@uh.edu or 713-743-9747) for more information or answers to burning questions.

If you’re ready to get involved, we’re currently making committee appointments for 2014-2015. Contact STARS Vice-chair Tina Baich, appointment maven extraordinaire, at cbaich@iupui.edu. She’ll be happy to connect you with an opportunity to serve on a committee or as a STARS representative.

All best,

Nora Dethloff
STARS Chair, 2013-2014

 

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BRASS Notes

Carol L. Schuetz, Editor

 

Message from the BRASS Chair
Hello BRASS members! It’s been an eventful fall for BRASS, as shown by the reports from committee chairs below.

We are excited about the $25,000 IMLS Sparks! Grant received by RUSA to create guidelines and best practices in financial literacy education in libraries. Kit Keller has been selected as project director, with a working team consisting of BRASS members Chris Le Beau, Andy Spackman, and Elizabeth Malafi, and an advisory panel with membership from a variety of organizations involved in financial literacy education. The grant will result in guidelines, a white paper, and webinars, and is an excellent opportunity for BRASS to make a difference in a growing area of library service.

In August the Harvard Business Review removed the ability to print, link, or download for 500 of its most used articles on the EBSCO platform. To regain this level of access libraries must now pay a significant premium. Concerned about this loss of access and its implications for the information ecology, BRASS formed a task force to study the situation and make recommendations. Ann Fiegen, Past Chair, led the group, which also included Annette Buckley, Glen McGuigan, Heidi Senior, Linda Hauck, and Lisa Ancelet. The resulting document passed through additional revisions and was approved by a vote of both the BRASS and RUSA executive committees. The RUSA/BRASS Statement on Harvard Business Review Pricing & Access will be announced through an ALA press release, distributed through multiple listservs, and is available on the BRASS website.

The HBR 500 statement will by no means be our last word on the matter. Rather, it should be the beginning of discussion, both within BRASS and between business librarians, their institutions, and publishers. BRASS has a role to play in advocating for access to information, and the strength of our members’ contributions will help us lead the way.

Andy Spackman
BRASS Chair, 2013-2014
andy_spackman@byu.edu

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MARS

Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section
Join the discussion at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/mars-l

Cathy Larson, Editor

Greetings!

We are fast approaching the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia from January 24-27, 2014. For Midwinter of 2014, MARS will again use a modified system of meetings. Most committees, other than the Executive Committee, will not meet in person during Midwinter. Committees are meeting virtually prior to Midwinter, and submitting a report of committee activities to the Executive Committee by email. The Executive Committee will meet in person during Midwinter and will refer to committee reports to conduct business. The Planning Committee, and members of those groups hosting discussion forums will be present as well. With the continuing challenges many of our members face in finding funding for two conferences per year, we hope this model will meet our needs.

Please let us know how you feel about this change. One issue is that we don’t seem to be able to get as many committee volunteers with the new format. Committee appointments, which typically begin July 1 of each year, are generally made between the Midwinter and Annual meetings and without interested volunteers attending our Midwinter committee meetings, it has been more of a challenge to identify those interested in working with our committees. I welcome your thoughts on ways we can increase our ability to identify willing and interested volunteers.

Watch for details on time and place in the coming weeks regarding the RUSA Membership Social. This event allows RUSA members and prospective members to meet and mingle while learning more about RUSA. I encourage you to attend if you are able to do so. The social is a highlight for RUSA during the Midwinter Meeting and it is a great place to encourage others to join us in MARS and to volunteer to serve on committees.

MARS will also be hosting some very interesting discussion forums during Midwinter. We are also planning a free preconference workshop Look for more specifics later this month. Please show your support by attending these forums if your schedule permits.

Please note that ALA’s new meeting policy, initiate last year, will be in effect. As a result, you will note that two of our discussion forums are shorter; only sixty minutes instead of the usual ninety. This new meeting policy is ALA’s response to feedback from members who requested shorter meeting times. See the Annual Conference 2013: Change Roadmap for more details on the change discussion.

Highlighting some of the work going on between conferences:

The Nominating Committee has been hard at work over the fall and they have prepared a slate for the upcoming elections. Watch your emails in March for the new ballot. And be sure to make your vote count!

The Planning Committee is preparing for Section Review. In conjunction with the members at large, the committee will be meeting virtually and at Midwinter to finalize the report that will be submitted to RUSA. This is a regular task, whereby each of the Sections in RUSA review their activities, structures and plans for the future. The review helps us to formally document where we’ve been, evaluate what changes may be needed, how we relate to other sections and divisions within ALA, to create a roadmap for continual improvement in the section, and to provide information back to our parent division, RUSA.

Finally, help us to select an outstanding section member for the MARS Achievement Recognition Award (My Favorite Martian) this year! See the Call for Nominations for information on award criteria and deadlines for nominations.

See you in Philadelphia!

Sam Stormont
srstormont@widener.edu
Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) 2013-2014

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RSS Review

Amy Rustic, Editor

RSS_Logo

 

 

 


Message from the Chair:
Hello RSS Members!

I hope all of you are staying warm as we head into winter.

RSS is working on its agility and responsiveness to the changing nature of librarianship. We are currently reviewing the charges of three of our committees to better reflect our membership and its needs. As we finalize those, please check this newsletter for the next update.

If you’re heading to Midwinter, please make a point of stopping by one of our discussion forums, or join us for our Fourth Annual Pancake Breakfast! It’s a great opportunity to network with RSS leadership and make new friends. We are in the last phase of planning, so make sure to check RSS-L for where we’ll be eating the morning of Saturday, January 25.

See you online and (maybe) at Midwinter!

Ann

Ann Brown
RSS Chair, 2013-2014
agbrown@gwu.edu

What Makes RSS Great? Tell us why you think RSS is great:http://tinyurl.com/rssgreat

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Message from the Chair

BRASS Notes

Carol L. Schuetz, Editor

 

BRASS members:

Please read the committee reports below about the activities and initiatives highlighting the 25 year of BRASS. This all occurs because of volunteer work! It has been an honor to serve with such a dedicated group of librarians. We look forward to more with the new BRASS Chair for 2013-2014 Andy Spackman.

For 25 years BRASS IS…

  • Welcoming new business librarians.
  • Professional growth in the field of business information (how to find it, and how to use it!).
  • Teaching and learning: guiding library users to business resources.
  • Education: preconference, programs, publications, guidelines and listserv advice that are used daily to make choices and decisions that affect our users.
  • Member publishers, database developers and our sponsors who work in conjunction with librarians and libraries to supply tools to enable our users to meet their goals.

The opportunity to learn from the best leaders and to become one.

BRASS IS more than 800 members working everyday in every kind of library.

Ann Fiegen
BRASS Chair 2012-2013
afiegen@csusm.edu

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Message from the Chair

RSS

Amy Rustic,Editor

RSS_Logo

 

 

 

Hello RSS Members!

I’m so excited to start my year as chair of this exciting section. It was great seeing so many of you in Chicago, especially at our Open House, featuring breakfast from EBSCO and our second annual Trivia Contest put together by the fantastic Marjorie Lear. And thank you to Sarah Hammill, our outgoing chair, for her fantastic leadership and can do attitude!

I do have one thing to shout to the rooftops: Young Adult Reference Services (YARS) is a brand new joint committee with Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)! We look forward to expanding this new cross-division committee a success. Thank you to Joe Thompson (Chair-Elect of RUSA and former Chair of RSS) and Sarah Hammill for seeing this through for us!

For the coming year, I want us to do all that we can to market our section. In this day and age, anything we can do to provide our members with quality programming, webinars, and value is the best goal we can have. One thing you can do is become a fan of RSS on Facebook! Check us out here: http://www.facebook.com/rss.rusa. We post periodic updates, members of the quarter, and if you won ANYTHING at the Open House in Chicago—your picture is already up there!

Welcome to all our new members and congratulations our newly elected leaders: Qiana Johnson, Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, and Don Boozer, Member-at-Large. I look forward to working with all of you in the next year!

Remember the code of the Reference Librarian—if you have any questions—ASK!

 


Ann Brown
agbrown@gwu.edu
RSS Chair, 2013-2014

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Message from the Chair

STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

 

Dear STARS,

My thanks to you for a terrific year. It has been my honor to serve as our section’s chair and to work with so many wonderful colleagues. As this newsletter attests, STARS is a very active and engaging organization. Our training, outreach, and membership initiatives now serve as models for RUSA.

As much as I’d like to bask the past year’s afterglow, I’m really looking forward to next year: Looking forward to Nora Dethloff’s tenure as our fearless leader. Looking forward to more sharing through our section’s webinars and programs. And looking forward to a celebration. During ALA Annual, 2014, Las Vegas, our section will celebrate 10 years of awesome. And STARS awesomeness is one thing that will not stay in Vegas.

Again, it has been my honor to serve such an outstanding organization and with such outstanding people. We do share and transform, and not just information resources. We share and we transform one another.

Thank you,

David Atkins
STARS Chair

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Message from the Chair

BRASS Notes

Carol Schuetz, Editor

 

Hello BRASS members!

BRASS celebrates 25 years as a section at ALA annual in Chicago 2013. All committees have been hard at work to bring you a full program schedule beginning on Friday morning June 28 and continuing through Monday night’s 25th BRASS Anniversary reception and dinner July 1 and the Tuesday morning’s Executive Board meeting. Twitter will be right there with you this year, follow along at BRASS’ very own hashtag #bizref. All members are invited to committee meetings of BRASS where many initiatives that improve business librarianship are happening; read more in these notes about those activities. Not a volunteer yet? There are many ways to participate in BRASS virtually and in person. BRASS welcomes you, contact incoming 2013-2014 Chair Andy Spackman.

Congratulations to our BRASS award winners. Plan to attend the RUSA Awards Ceremony to honor the accomplishments of our colleagues.

  • BRASS Gale Cengage Learning Award for Excellence In Business Librarianship: Michael R. Oppenheim
  • BRASS Gale Cengage Learning Student Travel Award: Kelly LaVoice
  • BRASS Business Expert Press Award: Annette Buckley
  • Emerald Research Award: Jennifer Boettcher
  • Morningstar Public Librarian Support Award: Salvatore DiVincenzo

Congratulations also to our newly elected BRASS officers: Todd Hines, incoming Chair-elect and Elizabeth Malafi, incoming Member at Large.

The Publications and Communications Committee will be posting a detailed conference schedule including all committee meetings but in the meantime, here are the BRASS conference highlights in brief. Be sure to also watch BRASS-L, the BRASS Facebook andBRASS website, #bizref on Twitter and the RUSA Blog for information about section activities. Room locations are found on the ALA 13 scheduler.

Programs (watch for more updates on BRASS-L)

 

Ann Fiegen
BRASS Chair 2012-2013
afiegen@csusm.edu

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Message from the Chair

History

Laura Hibbler, Editor

 

You will notice some changes in the History Section’s activities in Chicago. For the first time in many years the Section will have an All Committee Meeting on Saturday, June 29 at 8:30 A.M. In addition to a time for all committees to work, there will be a brief open meeting to provide updates on some exciting changes in the Section. On Sunday the section will have two programs! At 8:30 A.M. Library Engagement in National History Day Activities, will highlight how librarians at a variety of different institutions support this activity. Later on Sunday, June 30 at 1:30 P.M. Digital History: New Methodologies Facilitated by New Technologies, will explore the efforts of librarians and instructors to use technology to teach history. And as always, on Friday, June 28, we will have the Genealogy Pre-Conference and on Saturday, we hope you will participate in the Genealogy and Local History Discussion group.

If you cannot make it to Chicago, please keep up with posts to History-L concerning ways to be involved in the History Section without attending conferences.

Sara E. Morris

History Section Chair, 2012-2013

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Message from the Chair

MARS: Update from the Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS)

Join the discussion at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/mars-l

Cathy Larson, Editor

 

Annual Conference time is just around the corner, and I hope to see many of you in Chicago! The Emerging Technologies in Reference Group (MARS) has two programs and four discussion forums planned as well as several committee meetings, so mark your calendars and we hope to see you often. Also RUSA has a program in two parts as well as an orientation, so there are lots of ways to get involved, learn more, and network with your colleagues. If you haven’t tried out the ALA Scheduler, (http://ala13.ala.org/scheduler) I recommend it. ALA will keep this service up-to-date to reflect last minute room changes, and they monitor the site and may add seats to events where they see high advance demand. The good news is that most of our events are either in the Convention Center, or across the way in the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place which should cut down on many long trips back and forth on the buses.

Friday, start out with RUSA 101: Network, Get Oriented, Get Involved. This is a fun orientation and get-together. Friday, June 28, 2013 from 3:00-4:00 P.M. at Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Jackson Park 10ABC.

Saturday morning, June 29, from 8:30-10:00 A.M., the Planning Committee will be meeting in the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Boardroom 5 to work on Section Review and to continue updating the section Handbook. If you are interested in observing the work and possibly volunteering for the coming year or two, please join us. At the same time, the RSS All Committee meeting, including joint RSS/MARS Virtual Reference and Virtual Reference Tutorial Committee will be held at the McCormick Place Convention Center N226.

Next up, our Management of Electronic Resources Committee is sponsoring a discussion forum, Counting the Counts: the State of Public Services Statistics and Reporting. We’re all faced with the increasing need to make thoughtful data-driven decisions and to demonstrate our value to our communities and our parent institutions. Please join us from 10:30-11:30 A.M. in the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Burnham 23AB, for what is sure to be a critical conversation. The Committee will be following up the conversation after Annual with a webinar on reference statistical tools, so keep an eye on your email for further details.

Saturday afternoon from 1:00-2:30 P.M. our newest committee, User Experience Design will host a discussion forum, How Wide the Divide—Why We are Still Asking, followed by our Virtual Reference Discussion Group forum on Saturday, from 3:00-4:00 P.M. at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Room N135.

Capping off Saturday, from 4:00-5:30 P.M. in the Convention Center, room S105a-c will be the RUSA President’s Program: The Myth and the Reality of the Evolving Patron, featuring Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. If you like what you hear, you’ll want to participate in part II, which will take place Sunday morning from 10:30-11:30 A.M. in the McCormick Place Convention Center room E351, where Rainie will again join us to facilitate a more interactive conversation.

On Sunday, June 30, join us for our all committee meeting from 8:30-10:00 A.M. at the McCormick Place Convention Center, room N426a. If you’re on a committee already, this is your primary meeting time. If you’re a member who can volunteer to help with the work of the section, this is a chance to stop by, talk with the committee chairs and members in one location, and find a committee that fits your interests.

Sunday from 1:00-2:30 P.M. will be the MARS Chair’s Program also at the McCormick Place Convention Center, room S403. We will start out honoring Nancy Cunningham, this year’s recipient of the MARS Achievement Recognition Award. Then we have four great speakers lined up: David Bietila, Web Program Director from the University of Chicago, Lesley Moyo, Director of Research & Instruction and Tracy Gilmore, Technical Services Librarian, both from Virginia Tech, and Elizabeth German, Web Services Coordinator from the University of Houston Libraries. They will address the topic: Usability, the User Experience & Interface Design: The Role of Reference.

Sunday from 3:00-4:00 P.M., at the McCormick Place Convention Center, room S404bc, the Local Systems and Services Committee will host a program entitled, Leveraging Open Source Software to Create Library Websites. Nicole Engard will provide an overview on open source software and talk about WordPress, Brendan Quinn will speak about Drupal, and Julie Hardesty will discuss Omeka.

Also on Sunday, from 4:30-5:30 P.M., in McCormick Place Convention Center, room N127, our Hot Topics Discussion Group will host a discussion forum, Big Data at the Desk: Data Visualization and Research for the Rest of Us.

And the last event of Sunday evening will be the RUSA Awards Reception and Volunteer Appreciation Party from 5:00-6:30 P.M. at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Prairie Room.

On Monday, July 1, if you’re still in town, plan to stop by our MARS Executive Committee Meeting from 8:30-11:30 A.M. at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Hotel, Room Burnham 23A-C. The meeting is where MARS Committee and Discussion Forum chairs, as well as MARS representatives to RUSA level committees share their activities of the last six months and their upcoming plans. We are meeting jointly with the RSS Executive Committee for the last hour to coordinate activities of our two sections.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to volunteer, please go to http://www.ala.org/rusa/volunteer, or contact Sam Stormont, Vice Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) at srstormont@widener.edu.

For those of you who have already volunteered, thanks for all your contributions to MARS and MARS members this year. You are making a difference. Thanks for making this a great year to be Chair.

Debbie Bezanson
bezanson@gwu.edu
Chair, Emerging Technologies in Reference Section (MARS) 2012-2013

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Message from the Chair

RSS Review

Amy Rustic, Editor

Hello RSSers!!

It’s hard to believe that the ALA Annual conference is in a little more than a month away. By the time you read this, you probably have already purchased your plane ticket and booked your hotel so now it’s time to plan your conference schedule!

RSS has a number of exciting events scheduled at the conference including the Second Annual Trivia Contest!

Be sure to mark your calendar with the RSS Open House on Saturday, June 29 at 8:30 A.M. in the McCormick Place Convention Center, N226. The Open House includes:

  • A Trivia Contest
  • Opportunities to meet new people and reconnect with old friends!
  • Many thanks to EBSCO for the Refreshments!

In addition to the RSS Open House, there are lots of opportunities to discuss hot topics including Arizona Library Services to the Spanish Speaking, Serving the Health Information Needs of Communities, New Reference Services, and more. Through RSS Committees you can also find out the latest in reference research and learn all about Slam the Boards. Read below for more information and see the RUSA for RSS event page for descriptions!

If you can’t make it to ALA, don’t despair! RSS has plans for free webinars, including, “Tried and True and Even Something New: Best Old and New Medical and Health Information Resources.” Stay tuned to RSS-L for more information.

In addition to all of the great happenings from RSS Committees, I would like to say congratulations to the many leaders in our section! This issue of the RSS Review features Cindy Levine as the Member of the Quarter. Read below to learn more about Cindy.

Additionally, the RSS Recognition Committee has selected Larayne Dallas as the RSS Service Achievement Award Winner for 2013. The committee used a number of adjectives to describe Larayne including modest, dedicated, kind, good-humored, and a quiet and effective leader. Be sure to attend the RUSA Awards Reception where we will honor and celebrate Larayne’s quiet but hard-working dedication to the section. Mark your calendars with Sunday June 30th from 5:00-6:30 P.M. at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Prairie Room.

RSS Members are doing lots of great things including quietly leading and serving on committees, publishing pertinent research related to reference and more. To read about what the RSS community is publishing be sure to check outhttp://connect.ala.org/node/184065.

Finally I would like to take a minute to thank you everyone for making RSS the best section in RUSA. As the RSS Chair, I enjoyed working with each and every one of you. I would like to say a special thank you to Jason Coleman who did a great job of always making me sound eloquent in the minutes. Thank you to all of the chairs for your dedication and enthusiasm in leading your committees. Many thanks to Liane Taylor for making my job a lot easier by organizing timelines, deadlines, and expectations during her term. Finally, a huge welcome to Ann Brown, who will take over as chair in July. I think you will find Ann’s leadership style to be relaxed yet purposeful. I look forward to working with her and continuing the great successes of RSS!

I look forward to continuing the successes of RSS!

RSSsarah

 

 

RSS Member of the Quarter: Cynthia Levine
Humanities Reference Librarian, Research and Information Services, NCSU Libraries

RSScindylevine

Describe yourself in 3 words.
Striving for balance.

What do you like to do for fun?
Yoga, cooking, reading, and going to restaurants with friends in ALA conference cities.

Describe RSS in 3 words.
Supportive, smart, friendly.

What do you value most about RSS and/or RUSA?
I’m grateful to both RSS and RUSA for providing a kind of parallel professional life that complements and supports my primary role as a reference librarian at North Carolina State University. It’s been great to be part of these overlapping communities, and to build relationships with librarians across the country. Another benefit has been the ability to experiment with, and practice different kinds of roles, such as leadership and event planning, in a supportive environment. All in all, it’s been a great opportunity to develop skills to bring home, and to share ideas with great friends from other libraries.

Where do you see reference services going in the next 3-5 years?
My hope is that those of us in reference and public services can focus on clarifying and articulating our core values, and use those values as the foundation for moving forward. This should allow us to do what we do best – help people find new ways to connect to the information they need in order to grow, to learn, and to create.

In your own words…
I like to believe that reference librarians can maintain a kind of independence that allows us to be real advocates for our users who seek information – that whenever possible we can help our users overcome barriers – and that in this quest, we can skillfully be on their side.

What makes RSS Great?
“RSS is constantly innovating and adjusting to stay current with the needs of front-line librarians and staff. This includes creating new committees as well as sunsetting old ones and being at the forefront of using conferencing software to share information with its members through webinars and online meetings. Successful libraries live and breathe user-centered design and services. RSS is great because it models this commitment and challenges us all to put users first.”

Jason Coleman, Kansas State University

“When I first started with RSS, I was appointed to a committee. From then on, I made great friends, learned a lot from librarians in all sorts of libraries, and found professional development opportunities not readily available in other parts of ALA. “

Ann Brown, George Washington University

“I appreciate the opportunities for learning from each other as well as to share what I can, and I feel that RSS offers guidance about being involved professionally in the best possible ways. The organization has improved over the last couple of years, too, thanks to the efforts of some great leaders. I love being able to collaborate with academic and public librarians, gaining perspectives I may not otherwise hear.”

Cathay Crosby, Ask a Librarian Delaware Statewide Coordinator

Have a story to share? Let us know what makes RSS Great!
tinyurl.com/rssgreat

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Message from the Chair

STARS

Kerry Keegan, Editor

STARS members have been busy in the past few months and volunteering up a storm! We would like to congratulate Chair-Elect Christina “Tina” Baich and Member-at-Large Megan Gaffney for representing resource sharing in this year’s RUSA Section Election. Also making waves is Margaret Ellison, who will now be acting as Director-at-Large for the RUSA Board.

Our new initiatives are still underway and the STARS team is focusing on compiling the data collected at ALA Midwinter in an effort to improve the quality and relevancy of our many offerings, including those upcoming at ALA Annual in Chicago.

If you would like to become involved in our dynamic section or have questions out what STARS can do for you and your library, please drop me an email (datkins@utk.edu) or give me a call (865-974-6866). There is always room for more STARS.

David P. Atkins

STARS Chair

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Message from the BRASS Chair

BRASS Notes

Carol L. Schuetz, Editor

Hello BRASS members!

Don’t you love traveling in January? BRASS was certainly in Seattle. Read Jason Dewland’s notes about the very informative discussion group on what libraries are doing to support entrepreneurs in our communities. The group of about thirty librarians attending also welcomed six librarians new to BRASS. Midwinter was also a time to attend more sessions of RUSA or other division forums and discussions than may be possible at Annual. Many of us also noted that midwinter was a good time to visit with library vendors on the exhibit floor.

Are you looking forward to the BRASS 25th anniversary year in Chicago? All hardworking volunteer committee members are planning a full line-up of pre-conferences, programs, forums, and discussion groups. Read on about the Business 101 all-day preconference set for Friday June 28th. Also new this year will be a Friday afternoon workshop for academic librarians interested in AACSB accreditation topics, sponsored by Emerald. Information about registering for that workshop will come out later this spring.

Make this year a goal to get your financial house in order and attend the July 1, Monday morning BRASS program: Investment Success! Building & Managing Your Retirement Portfolio. Look for registration information for the 25 years of BRASS celebrating business librarian-to-librarian networking.

Read on about how BRASS helps each of us every day do our jobs better. As you can read from these notes BRASS never sleeps, more and more we are conducting our business year round and virtually. New volunteers are needed for BRASS committees; please fill out the volunteer form in the RUSA website.

Ann Fiegen
BRASS Chair 2012-2013
afiegen@csusm.edu

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Message from the History Chair

History

Laura Hibbler, Editor

From our discussion groups, committee meetings, and our dinner, the History Section had a great time in Seattle. The Executive Board made two important decisions. Section Committees will no longer meet at Midwinter. Committees will be expected to hold at least one virtual meeting between Annual 2013 and Midwinter 2014. By no longer requiring attendance at two meetings a year, we hope more members are able to participate in committee activities. The other important piece of news is that at Annual in Chicago, the History Section will have an All Committee Meeting, instead of meeting individually. This will create a great opportunity for us to network and get to know one another. Join us!

As you are contemplating how to be involved in ALA and RUSA in the next year, consider volunteering to serve on one of the History Section’s committees. Our Vice-Chair, Michelle Baildon, will be working on appointments throughout the spring. To see a list of our committees and/or volunteer, visit the History Section’s Committees page.

Sara E. Morris
History Section Chair, 2012-2013