Issue 83 (Winter/Spring 2008)

APLIC-International Communicator
Winter/Spring 2008, Issue #83

The APLIC-International Communicator is generally published three times yearly by the Association for Population and Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers, International.
Editors:
Laurie Calhoun, International Center for Research on Women, 1120 20th St.,
NW, Ste. 500 North, Washington, DC 20036. Phone: 202-797-0007 ext. 126;
Fax: 202-797-0020 E-mail: lcalhoun@icrw.org
&
Nykia M. Perez, University of Pennsylvania, Population Studies Center, 3718 Locust
Walk, Philadelphia, Pa, 19104-6298. Phone: 215-898-5375; Fax: 215-898-2124; E-mail: nmperez@pop.upenn.edu

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President’s Message

By Kay Willson, Constella Futures

Dear Members—as we count down the last few weeks to our 41st annual conference I regret that this is the first communication you’ve received since our celebration in New York. During our 40th anniversary reception at the Population Council office, we viewed an entertaining slide show of APLIC historical photos compiled by Lori Delaney (some photos from 2007 conference follow). Congratulations from long time member Carol Knopf were received and additional remembrances came from Ruth Sandor (her message follows as a separate item below). We departed New York with hopes to develop and maintain a network of APLIC alumni—we still hope to. We’d hoped to act on suggestions from the session on “APLIC-I: The Way Forward”—we will. Our listserv remains our most consistently used and useful membership activity. APLIC is lucky to have a dedicated cadre of members willing to give of their time and talents, as evidenced by this issue of our newsletter and the extensive planning that goes into the annual conference. I am looking forward to seeing you in New Orleans in April (and again next year in Detroit).

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2008 Annual Conference Announcement

By Lori Delaney, Carolina Population Center

APLIC-I’s 41st Annual Conference will be held April 14-16, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The conference theme is “Orchestrating Innovation: Being Instrumental to Information Exchange.”

The conference program includes a keynote presentation by Steven MacCall of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.

Other conference sessions include:

  • Maximizing the Use of Free Resources for Research and Training
  • Driving Up the Value of Internal Information
  • Models for Synthesizing Information Resources with Your Organization
  • Translational Research: Using Data to Inform and Influence Diverse Audiences
  • Second Life: Current and Future Uses

The conference will be held at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel.

In addition, conference participants will tour the Martin Luther King Library to learn about disaster and recovery strategies that the library staff used post-Hurricane Katrina. The banquet on Tuesday night will be at The Bourbon House.

Full conference program:
http://www.aplici.org/conferences/2008.

Registration deadline is March 17, 2008!
Conference registration form: http://www.aplici.org/conferences/2008/registrationform2008.htm

The conference sessions, library tour, and the banquet offer many fantastic opportunities to learn new information and to network and socialize with colleagues.

The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau provides this guidance:

“New Orleans: Pronounced noo aw-lins or new or-lins or new or-lee-yuns, but not new orleens. Unless referring to the street or the parish of or-leens. Or when you’re singing.”

Hope to see you in New Orleans!

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APLIC-I Fall 2007 Board Meeting Held in Chapel Hill

By Kay Willson, Constella Futures

Lori Delaney hosted the board of directors at UNC Carolina Population Center on September 13-14, 2007. In attendance were Kiet Bang, Julia Cleaver, Laurie Calhoun, Lori Delaney, Yan Fu, Tara Murray, Margie Shiels, Claire Twose, and Kay Willson. The minutes will be made available in New Orleans.

Some highlights:

  • Bylaw changes are being proposed
  • Procedures manual being finalized
  • Name change and new logo discussed

The Fall meeting serves two main purposes, first to bring the board together to conduct necessary business of the association (especially related to finances, membership, and special initiatives) and second, to plan the Spring conference. The board also provides input on future newsletter content. The Fall meeting is open to members who might wish to attend and is usually held at the site of the sitting Vice President.

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Remembering APLIC’s Start

By Ruth Sandor, MLS’62, University of Illinois Emerita, Senior Special Librarian, University of Wisconsin, Center for Demography and Human Ecology (Received in April 2007)

In 1970 Hal Winsborough, then Director of the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin hired me as the Center’s first professional librarian. There was a small eclectic collection with some superb holdings, but quite haphazard in organization and no acquisition policy beyond taking what our professors cast our way.

At first I was totally focused on housekeeping chores, feeling very adrift and alone. In early 1971 Prof. Winsborough announced he was sending me to a conference of population librarians in Chapel Hill, NC. A Charter Committee had been formed the previous year and at this conference APLIC was formally established. I remember being stunned at learning that others doing like work existed and grateful to my Center for acknowledging with monetary support that information services are an integral part of a research and teaching endeavor.

Twenty-seven years later I retired from Wisconsin’s Center for Demography, still extremely happy with a challenging career and with my network of friends and colleagues in APLIC. We worked, most of us, alone in our subject fields at our scattered institutions but had a support system across the world.

APLIC-International provided the means for individual information professionals and disparate institutions to innovate, train, sponsor, publish, and otherwise foster cooperation and communication in population and family planning information.

Members contributed to the National Library of Medicine¹s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), early computerized information retrieval systems such as POPINFORM, multilingual thesauri, training institutes in Bangkok and elsewhere, union lists of serials, international exchange of duplicate books and serials (DUPS), holding lists of international censuses, and many others. Most of these were the work of people like Neil Zimmerman of the Population Council, Gera Draaijer of University of Texas-Austin PRC, Edith Ericson of Penn State University PRI, Avi Green of UNFPA.

Supported by CDE and published by APLIC, first in paper and later as an electronic file on a Gopher site was my own work, Population and Related Organizations: International Address List, which formed the basis for the POPIN address list.

I was President of APLIC in 1981 when POPIN held a consultative meeting in Geneva, and as such my way was sponsored by the UN. That was a heady experience, good for my aura at Wisconsin, and I acquired new friends, a cuckoo clock and a taste for coffee with hot milk.

Following the 1992 APLIC/PAA conference in Denver six of us spent the weekend skiing in Breckenridge: unless I find the photos I cannot recall who besides myself, Richard Hankinson and Neil Zimmerman. We had a glorious time, three of us doing downhill and three cross-country all day, cooking in teams and too exhausted by altitude and effort to even play cards after dinner.

There were many dinners and cocktail hours, morning coffee and long talks in hotel lounges. I wish I could send photos; I took many good ones, but they are currently buried in boxes as I move.

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Librarians Vital to Data Preservation and Access

By Tara Murray, Pennsylvania State University

When institutions begin to archive research data, librarians should play a major role in the process, according to a research librarian at Purdue University.

Archiving data opens “opportunities for librarians to work with patrons in new ways,” Michael Witt told attendees during an SLA web seminar on February 20. While libraries have not traditionally collected research data, their archival and digital experience, commitment to preservation and access, and awareness of interdisciplinarity make them a natural fit for data repositories, according to Witt.

The seminar, “An Introduction to Institutional Data Repositories,” was a revised version of a talk Witt gave at the 2007 SLA conference in Denver. Witt is Interdisciplinary Research Librarian and Assistant Professor of Library Science at Purdue University.

Witt began by explaining what data means, why it is important to archive it, and how institutional repositories, currently used to store documents, can be used for data.

The reasons for archiving data are many. Witt said it is “good science,” because results can be reproduced, and data can be re-used for other purposes not imagined by the original research team. It is also increasingly a requirement by funding agencies, who want to make sure they get the most out of their investments in data collection.

Witt said librarians have traditionally been active at the “information bottleneck” that occurs as raw data is structured, analyzed, and interpreted in publications, but archiving data will draw librarians to be active during other phases of the research and dissemination process. Involving librarians earlier and later should improve data quality and access.

At Purdue, data archiving efforts have begun with librarians becoming involved with individual research projects, according to Witt. This suggests that APLIC-I librarians may be well situated to initiate or join data archiving efforts within their organizations.

In both academic and non-university settings, APLIC-I librarians typically work closely with researchers, and are often more involved with research projects than traditional academic librarians. Thus they may learn about data collections efforts early, and be able to work with researchers to form data sharing plans and then carry them out.

For librarians just getting started with data, Witt’s Conducting a Data Interview, available through Purdue University’s e-Pubs at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/81/, provides a framework for approaching researchers.

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Moving a Library: Lessons Learned from ICRW’s Recent Move

By Laurie Calhoun, International Center for Research on Women

ICRW was located at the same location for over 20 years. In 2006 our staff expanded rapidly (and I was hired) and we began to outgrow our space. Our landlord wanted to occupy all the additional space in the building, so we were forced to move. With office rents in the downtown Washington, DC area spiraling we had to choose between remaining in the city and downsizing our space per employee or moving to the suburbs for more space. We opted to remain in the city and located lovely new space at 1120 20th St. NW about 10 minutes away. Many staff members who had previously had offices were assigned cubicles and so, we needed to think carefully about use of common areas. Fortunately, the space allotted to the library was not downsized, but it was re-envisioned from a somewhat traditional space to a multi-purpose one, incorporating aspects of a staff lounge/dining area adjoining the kitchen.

This resulted in part from comments I had made to one of the architects on a tour of different office layouts. She and the designers were taken with the idea of the library being more like a contemporary bookstore than a traditional library, and when they saw our eventual space this led to the decision to have the kitchen flow into the library. This resulted in much greater use of the library overall and many staff who had never visited the previous library became regular visitors. The Washington Post subscription and M & M’s I supplied may have had something to do with this too!

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In any case I would strongly encourage you to meet with the architects and designers as early in the process as you can and to be a strong advocate for your space and users. I was new at ICRW so I wasn’t in as strong a bargaining position then as I might be now and many of the people involved in planning the move were not knowledgeable about library needs although they did their best to accommodate me. I read about library moves and talked to others who had been through them, but I still was not well prepared for what happened.

In the month or so preceding the move the library became the recipient of nearly 1,000 resources “donated” by staff downsizing their personal office collections for the new space. I had not anticipated or planned for this. I also got back over 200 library books, many of which had been written off as missing for years. This was a problem not only because of the time it took to evaluate and catalog items, but because we had no space for sorting since interns and consultants were sitting in the library because we were out of other office space. This meant that we had less time and space for weeding than originally planned. Fortunately, everything eventually fit.

Similarly unanticipated was the inheritance of archival responsibilities. The Office Manager had previously been responsible for yearly boxing of old program and financial records which were kept in a storeroom in the basement garage where they had been subject to floods, bugs, and some deterioration. I let myself in for this job when I spoke up for preserving ICRW’s institutional history when it seemed that in the press of the move items might not be evaluated if no one took the time to review them. As any of you with archive responsibilities can imagine, even with temporary help, this took over my time for many weeks.

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So, one key lesson learned way before the move was to expect the unexpected and prepare for everything to take much longer than you think it will. The other lessons learned had to do primarily with the mechanics of the move itself. It was scheduled for a Friday and Saturday and I had said early on that I would be present for the entire process although the office was closed that Friday. I had not been able to see the new space until a day or two before the move because it was still being built out and even when I saw it the new bookcases had not yet been set up. This should probably have sent off warning bells, but it did not.

When I arrived at the new office Saturday morning about a third of the bookcases were missing shelves and I was told that they were ordered, but wouldn’t arrive for a few days and possibly longer. So, we were unable to completely unpack the collection for several weeks. Also we were missing a new multi-media cabinet for about the same amount of time and we discovered only on unpacking at the new library that the optimum spacing of shelving in the bookcases (based on our measurements and those of the designer) did not allow for easy removal or reshelving of the black plastic boxes we use for grey literature. If we had repositioned the shelves we would have been able to unpack even fewer resources and the collection would not have fit so I decided to live with it.

In preparation for the move I had measured carefully and put post-it notes at the space where the collection should break to correspond with the new collection’s shelves which were different lengths (and allowing several inches for growth on each shelf). I also tried to label the book carts the movers used (by number and with some call numbers) and the new empty bookcases at the new location. I had a diagram showing which books and other materials went in which bookcases.

Somehow all of this soon fell apart because of disorganized, late movers who didn’t follow my instructions and were hard to supervise in a small confined space. Continuous shelf reading was almost impossible. By the time I discovered the extent of the “damage” at the old location it was really too late to do much about it. I did warn them repeatedly at the new location to leave space at the end of each shelf, but they often forgot to do it. It was hard to unpack in order since the movers were late picking up everything from the old location and book carts arrived in random order despite being numbered.

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Also in transit from the old office to the new one, one of the book carts tipped over and everything got out of order. It was all very chaotic. Because of this I would recommend that you insist on using special library movers or movers who are experienced in moving libraries. I had asked for this, but been told that it wasn’t possible to get special movers and that the ones we were using would use book carts and keep everything in order, etc. I was probably not forceful enough with the movers, but it was also tough to be in multiple places at the same time. If I were to do it again I would ask for another person to help supervise the packing and unpacking and for a meeting with the management of the moving firm ahead of time.

Despite all these setbacks I eventually got the whole library unpacked, the shelves were read and reorganized as needed, and I was able to go on vacation 3 weeks after the move. I definitely recommend planning for that! It really is amazing that the library ended up looking so wonderful (the designers deserve a lot of credit for that). These photos from a recent open house give you some sense of our new space. Staff members eat lunch here, have impromptu small meetings, read, and often stop by to browse the shelves. I know that the library is much more heavily utilized than it ever was at the old location and former staff members who visit can’t believe how nice it is. I hope that you can learn from my mistakes or at least be better prepared should you have to move your library and that if you do, your new location turns out as well as ours. Please come visit if you’re in DC.

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Spotlight on a Member Library: Catalog Conversion & Knowledge Management at Population Action International, Washington, DC

By Laurie Calhoun, International Center for Research on Women

Population Action International (PAI) is an independent policy advocacy group working to strengthen political and financial support worldwide for population programs grounded in individual rights. Founded in 1965, PAI is a private, non-profit group and accepts no government funds. PAI has about 35 staff including APLIC members Mary Panke, Director of Knowledge Resourcing (on the left below), and newly hired Morgan Grimes, Information Resources Assistant (on the right below). Welcome Morgan!

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PAI’s library catalog has about 48,000 records, mostly articles, but also over 6,000 books and reports, about half of which are classified in LC and half in a unique way. In addition, the collection includes photos, UN documents, and several specialized collections. For reference tools they rely on a small, fairly standard hardcopy collection, Lexis Nexis and APLIC, the most efficient and best resource available!

Right now the library is transitioning from a catalog using Inmagic DB Textworks to Inmagic Genie Express. According to Inmagic, “Genie Express is ideally suited for online catalog situations such as a corporation making a core set of research available via its intranet, a museum/archive publishing its image collection on the Internet, or a government agency publishing a specific collection of documents on the Internet.” PAI’s catalog was not online before, but Genie is completely web-based.

PAI is using Genie for its traditional records as well as non-traditional resources such as PDFs, podcasts, and image formats not previously included in the catalog. Genie searches full-text documents and links to web-based resources. The interface is very user-friendly with icons and layers of visual aids. Users can browse indexes in many fields and search across all fields. Mary plans to include cues such as icons to indicate record type, in addition to images of book covers in selected records. The product has an Info Cart where users can check out resources and share them with others via e-mail increasing catalog utilization and self-service. It also supports automation and integration of cataloging, loans, serials, and orders processes. PAI’s implementation was customized and built for them by Inmagic which also performed the conversion. It is being tested by Mary, Morgan, and select staff in an online test site environment and will be made available to the full staff soon. Mary’s interest in Genie was sparked 2 years ago when she hosted In magic’s demonstration of Genie for DC-based libraries. She has offered to host another in the future.

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The PAI library is heavily involved in knowledge management activities. Mary and her IT counterpart are partners in leading this effort. Mary uses a junkyard analogy to describe their efforts to unbury information accumulated over years and to organize and reuse the valuable assets in the most efficient, economical, and effective way. This is a multi-year, multi-stage process beginning with the systematic organization of the shared drive, creation of an archive, establishment of a photo collection, development of a project tracking tool, and now the library catalog. A lot of this foundational work was accomplished while they waited for the release of Microsoft SharePoint 2007, which will be used as a portal to the different resource collections. PAI’s senior management is very supportive of this effort and various teams help to make their projects succeed. Mary and her colleagues began the project several years ago by working closely with internal teams to organize their files and folders on the shared drive in ways that were meaningful to them. They loosely standardized and opened access to department folders and established file naming conventions for internally-generated documents. Collections of external pdfs were centralized into topic libraries and photos organized into country collections. They implemented change through a series of pilot projects to slowly raise the level of organization through baby steps and not overwhelm anyone.

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The archive pilot project, which uses DocuShare software includes PAI publications, speeches, presentations, and historical documents. The photo database pilot organizes photos that had been scattered throughout the shared drive and allows staff to use a web-based search function and provides a workflow tool for the graphics department. Staff are encouraged to tag their trip photos and Morgan catalogs them into the database. Photos are then used on the website and in publications and many of them are also displayed in the office. The most recent of the pilots (to date) is the library catalog conversion. MOSS 07 will be used as a hub to jump off to each of these sites. A tracking tool containing strategic plan elements and indicators is in Beta. Teams will be able to report weekly on their activities via a workflow tool and simultaneously update indicators in the tracking tool. With the full implementation of SharePoint MOSS 2007, they also plan to have team spaces for collaboration and opt-in RSS feeds. Mary has additional projects on the drawing board and will be speaking about her work at our upcoming conference so you will be able to ask her questions and join in the discussion at that time.
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Do you want to get more involved with APLIC-I? Volunteer!

By Tara Murray, Pennsylvania State University

Volunteering for a position on the APLIC-I board is a great way to get to know APLIC-I better. We welcome both new and experienced members on the board.

As a board member, you’ll attend two board meetings a year, participate in the governance of the association, and have opportunities to serve on APLIC-I committees, doing outreach, publishing the newsletter, keeping our web site up to date, and planning the annual conference. You’ll get to know your fellow APLIC-I members better, and have the opportunity to visit other members’ libraries.

APLIC-I directors serve staggered 3-year terms, in “classes” named for the year in which the term expires. The terms begin and expire at the annual business meeting held during our conference in March or April. We are currently seeking to fill 3-year terms in the class of 2011.

For a list of current board members and committees, see http://www.aplici.org/members/board.htm

If you are interested in volunteering or would like to know more, please contact Tara Murray at murray@pop.psu.edu or 814-863-7547.

The APLIC-I Nominating Committee consists of: Tara Murray (chair), Margie Shiels, and Julia Cleaver.
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Happenings: Calendar of Events

By Nykia M. Perez, University of Pennsylvania

April 14-16, 2008
APLIC-I’s 41st Annual Conference: “Orchestrating Innovation: Being Instrumental to Information Exchange” Sheraton New Orleans New Orleans, Louisiana

April 17-19, 2008
Population Association of America (PAA) 2008 Annual Meeting, Sheraton New Orleans New Orleans, Louisiana

April 7-9, 2008
Computers In Libraries 2008, 23nd Annual Conference, Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, VA

May 27-30, 2008
(IASSIST) 2008 Annual Conference: “Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation,” Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources, Stanford, California

May 16-21, 2008
Medical Library Association (MLA) 2008 Annual Meeting and Exhibition: “Connections: BridgingtheGaps,” Hyatt Regency Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

June 15-18, 2008
Special Libraries Associations (SLA) 2008 Annual Conference, Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, Washington

June 26 – July 2, 2008
2008 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, California

August 1-4, 2008
American Sociological Association (ASA) 103rd Annual Meeting: “Worlds of Work,” Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts

August 3-8, 2008
ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians, Cambridge, Massachusetts

August 10-14, 2008
World Library and Information Congress (WLIC): 74th IFLA General Conference and Council, “Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding,” Quebec City Convention Center, Quebec City, Canada

October 20-22, 2008
Internet Librarian International 2008: “Beyond 2.0: User-Focused Tools & Practices,” Monterey Conference Center, Monterey, California

October 28-31, 2008
EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2008: “Interaction, Ideas, Inspiration,” Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida

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APLIC-I Call for Submissions & Volunteers

The APLIC-I Communicator Needs You

Open Positions

Conference & Workshop Reporters needed
If you are interested in contributing to the Communicator reports on any conferences or workshops that our members have attended that would be of interest to other members are welcome. Please send brief or in-depth reports to the editor(s) of the Communicator. E-mail the APLIC-I Communicator editor your report: Nykia M. Perez (nmperez@pop.upenn.edu).

“Spotlight On Our Members” profiles a different member of APLIC-I in most issues of the APLIC-I Communicator. The member is selected from the membership list and is then interviewed by one of the Editor(s) or members can volunteer to participate. The goal is to foster a broader appreciation of the diverse membership of the association. Do you have a story you would like to tell? Talk to us.

“Spotlight On Our Libraries” will profile a different type of information organization in most issues of the APLIC-I Communicator. A member library is selected from the membership list and is then asked to contribute a short description of their organizations library or information service. Members can also volunteer to participate. The goal is to foster a broader appreciation of the diversity in our member’s organizations and to share the different types of work that APLIC-I members do. Do you want to know how another library does “it”? or Do you want to share how you do “it”? This is the section of the newsletter where we will try to provide you with some answers and examples. Volunteer to put the spotlight on your library today!

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. Please contact us: Laurie Calhoun at: lcalhoun@icrw.org or Nykia M. Perez at: nmperez@pop.upenn.edu.

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