Ruth Sandor

I first joined APLIC-I when I started my job as Information Core Director at Penn State’s Population Research Institute. I was a new professional – just a year out from receiving my MLIS – and new to the field of population. My colleagues in APLIC helped me understand the information needs of demographers and helped me locate difficult-to-find articles and documents, but perhaps most importantly they gave me a network of other information professionals to talk to.

My first exposure to conference planning came during my first APLIC-I conference, in Atlanta in 2002. I remember listening to discussions about the conference’s theme, programming, and social events and having my eyes opened to what it takes to plan a successful event. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would go on to work on many events in the following years, from planning APLIC board meetings and conferences, to hosting events for my local SLA chapter, to coordinating an international postal history symposium in my current job.

I’ve been involved in many other professional organizations, but APLIC-I always stands out for two reasons: the small size of the organization allowed me to really get to know the other members, and the diversity of the membership – including many different kinds of information professionals in many different settings – exposed me to new ideas and ways of doing things

The possibilities of digital information are transforming the way we work. Documents that were never searchable can be searched. Datasets can be combined. Huge amounts of data can be accessible from a desktop. This opens up powerful new opportunities, but also many questions about ethics, privacy, security, and intellectual property.

On the other hand, I think personal relationships will be even more important. We can no longer expect that users will come to the library – either its physical or virtual presence. Libraries and librarians need to become more embedded in their users’ lives and work. It is crucial for information professionals to act as part of teams within their organizations, rather than as cost centers. All that said, and despite the potential of digital information, I’ve yet to see a technology as adaptable and long-living as print on paper, and I don’t see books going away any time soon.

I came to the American Philatelic Research Library in July 2010, after spending nine years as an information services director for the Population Research Institute at nearby Penn State University. I’m active in the Special Libraries Association (SLA) (Cabinet Chair, 2014; Secretary, 2015) and Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA) and serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration. The world’s largest library dedicated to stamp collecting and postal history, it is just 11 miles from Penn State’s campus so I still live in State College. Philatelists are incredible researchers and writers, and most place a high value on libraries. It’s refreshing to work in a place where the library is considered so integral to the larger organization. In 2016, we opened a new 19,000-square-foot library, and I was deeply involved in the design, construction, and moving. Believe it or not, I still use census data in this job – we do censuses of stamps!

I’ve been very active with the Special Libraries Association, and recently served on the board of directors and as secretary. I always enjoy seeing friends from APLIC at conferences. I also serve on the editorial board for the Journal of Library Administration, editing a column on special libraries. I’d love to get a contribution for the column from an APLIC member – if you have an idea, please get in touch with me! Tara Murray tmurray@stamps.org

Outside of work, I’ve gotten even more into running. In 2010, I ran a 50-mile race, and I’m getting ready to run the Boston Marathon for the ninth time this April. I’m excited to be raising money for Centre Volunteers in Medicine, a local organization providing medical, dental, and case management services to people without health insurance.

2011 Washington DC Urban Institute tour

Oswald Tower at Penn State, home of the Population Research Institute. From left to right, Lori Delaney, Claire Twose, Yan Fu, Julia Cleaver, Tara Murray, Kay Willson, Joann Donatiello, Kiet Bang. I think this was an APLIC board meeting

University of Michigan, maybe ICPSR’s offices

APLIC at New Orleans Public Library, 2008

In celebration of APLIC-I 50th Anniversary, we are posting profiles of many of our retired former members.  We are also seeking current contact information for colleagues who should be appearing in this blog or attending our Chicago Conference April 24-26 2017.  Please contact Jean Sack with former member information / your profile!

Neil was a founding officer of APLIC, the Association of Population/Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers in the 1970s. He developed and implemented a program to provide academic books to libraries in developing countries. As an active participant in the APLIC-I listserv, Neil both requested and routinely provided hard-to-find documents for other colleagues.

Neil Zimmerman, Population Council Librarian, retired at the end of February 2017.  In more than four decades of service, Neil has shown unwavering commitment to providing the best library collections and services for the Council’s researchers and editors. Neil joined the Council in 1974 as its first professional librarian, coordinating acquisitions and information requests. In 1985, he catalogued and expanded access to major periodical and social science indexes, including the “Women and Development” collection, which offered many items that were unpublished and unavailable elsewhere.

Spurred in part by changes in the scholarly and publishing environments, Neil created an online catalog in the late 1990s to integrate the library’s records with WorldCat, the world’s database of library collections. This allows the Council to connect with resources in libraries globally through interlibrary loan. Over the last 12 years, Neil has built a robust service for journal articles and has supplied access to more than 18,000 articles for staff in all offices. Most recently, Neil led an initiative to digitize legacy publications, including the Council’s annual report collection.

His Population Council colleagues In New York gave Neil a hearty thank you for his exceptional service and leadership, and celebrated Neil’s accomplishments at a reception on Tuesday, 28 February. Those who were not able to attend extended their best wishes and remarks to publications@popcouncil.org

What will Neil do after “retirement”? Neil’s love of the outdoors can be traced back more than 35 years—to a raffle, a car and little bit of luck.

“It all started in 1974 when I won a car in a raffle and didn’t know what to do with the thing,” Zimmerman said. “I was lucky enough to be in New York, which has a wealth of open space, so I started going camping with friends.” Those camping trips familiarized Zimmerman, now 67, with the maps of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference, an organization he ultimately joined, and then served as president from 1987 to 2001. During his time with the Trail Conference, the organization published a Shawangunk trail map, which acquainted Zimmerman with a core area for OSI’s landscape protection efforts.  “Week after week, as we came up to check for the accuracy of the maps, we were blown away by the beauty of the Shawangunks,” he said. He has since moved to Accord, NY, in the heart of the region, and is now president of the Friends of the Shawangunks.

Excerpt from http://www.osiny.org/site/DocServer/OSI_2013-AR-Final_web.pdf?docID=12981

In celebration of APLIC-I 50th Anniversary, we are posting profiles of many of our retired former members.  We are also seeking current contact information for colleagues who should be appearing in this blog or attending our Chicago Conference April 24-26 2017.  Please contact Jean Sack with former member information / your profile!

I joined APLIC-I when I was working at JHU/CCP.  I don’t think my colleagues helped me directly since my job at the time was somewhat unique.  However I valued the community of like-minded librarians.

[Find Peggy! Was this photo of APLIC-I taken during the Chicago conference ?  We invite APLIC-I to name the 10 friends in your comments]

I valued belonging to APLIC-I for being part of a community of librarians who work in population and RH and who share many of the same challenges and priorities. Now I am concerned that librarians will be less valued as people access digital tools and resources in the future.

Since leaving JHU/CCP and joining as KM/IT Adviser at USAID/GH/PRH/PEC, I have had lots of great experiences at USAID with travel to many different places including a focus on work in South Sudan and West Africa.

Margaret (Peggy) D’Adamo
KM/IT Adviser, USAID/GH/PRH/PEC 

In celebration of APLIC-I 50th Anniversary, we are posting profiles of many of our retired former members.  We are also seeking current contact information for colleagues who should be appearing in this blog or attending our Chicago Conference April 24-26 2017.  Please contact Jean Sack with former member information / your profile!

In 1970 I was hired as the first professional information specialist at the Center for Demography, Department of Sociology, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The Director of the Center told me there was an organization of other population information specialists and more or less ordered me to join and attend a meeting at Chapel Hill.

I went, was astounded at the depth of knowledge of the field and delighted to have colleagues with whom to consult.

The fact that APLIC met in conjunction with PAA raised my standing with my professorial team at Wisconsin.  Some of the other NIH-funded population research centers did not have libraries nor information professionals, and it became a recruiting tool for Wisconsin.  As our grads dispersed, they pushed for such services.  Or called for assistance.

Speakers and workshops, along with networking, were valuable features of APLIC.

If I were to write of the value of belonging to APLIC-I in haiku

Kolbe, Green, Zuga

Hankinson and Zimmerman

Reservoirs of pop knowledge

In envisaging our information field progressing into the next 50 years:  The basics remain the same: selection of solid dependable information, storage and retrievability, and using reliable criteria.  Subject specialist do not often have the training to use the tools in the way that information specialists do.

What fascinating places, jobs, life-experiences have you had in the years since you were an APLIC-I member? I have reinvented myself as a watercolor artist.  I spend half of the year in the middle of a forest in a small cottage with no internet signal, and the other half in a glass condo in the center of the state’s capitol city. Common to both places: a great public library.

In celebration of APLIC-I 50th Anniversary, we are posting profiles of many of our retired former members.  We are also seeking current contact information for colleagues who should be appearing in this blog or attending our Chicago Conference April 24-26 2017.  Please contact Jean Sack with former member information / your profile!

Susan Pasquariella is also enjoying retirement, although she hadn’t been able to do as much travelling as she and her husband would have liked because of her mother’s health.  In 2009, Bernie still had a small private practice and that had its own demands.

She wrote the following in a 2009 email: I didn’t really pursue consulting after I left UNFPA, although I did do some work for Columbia University.  I had planned to do volunteer work at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center but several of our close friends have become ill and passed away recently and the prospect of spending even more time in a hospital is not so appealing at the moment. On a happier note, I’ve tried to keep in touch with some APLIC-I colleagues and have promised to donate my large collection of APLIC Conference Proceedings to the archives.  Bernie is pushing to deliver them to Margie and Julia in person some time during 2010 Spring.  This is really an excuse to sample the North Carolina barbeque, but it would be fun to see everyone again.  I do miss the APLIC collegiality.

In 2016, Susan has actively been sharing APLIC-I contacts with Jean Sack to pursue for updates!

In celebration of APLIC-I 50th Anniversary, we are posting profiles of many of our retired former members.  We are also seeking current contact information for colleagues who should be appearing in this blog or attending our Chicago Conference April 24-26 2017.  Please contact Jean Sack with former member information / your profile!

I was working at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill when I first joined APLIC. I began at CPC in November 1993 and went to my first APLIC conference that spring in Miami. Jean Sack took me under her wing although she was also quite new, and made sure I met everybody and felt thoroughly connected. To this day, years out of the population arena, I still think of that conference as an exceptional example of collegial fellowship.

APLIC reinforced my inclination to think of the future. I still think one of the best things we did during my time in APLIC was to run an internet room during at least one PAA conference (in New Orleans) so attendees could check email, get help with internet questions, etc. It seems so “old hat” now that everybody has mobile devices and can be online anywhere anytime, but in 1996, that was definitely not the case. Most people didn’t have laptops or, if they did, they didn’t carry them around at conferences. Wireless was nonexistent. We arranged for computers, hardwired connections, and staffed the room during the entire PAA conference. It was great to work with a group of people willing to take a chance, to push the envelope, and to do something innovative to meet the needs of the people we served back on our home turfs.

It’s about people.
Smart, thoughtful, sharing people.
No group is better.

How do you envisage our information field progressing into the next 50 years?  Augmented reality and virtual reality may finally have a real impact on the non-entertainment world. I envision easier ways to visualize data in 3D with the ability to interactively manipulate it. How will libraries be involved in creating, storing, analyzing, accessing 3D data sets? (And make them retrievable?) Imagine having someone ask about the impact of climate change on the population in an island country and be able to pop the person into a virtual environment where he or she can experience the changes and alter variables to see how the impact might change?

What fascinating places, jobs, life-experiences have you had in the years since you were an APLIC-I member?
When I left CPC, the two things I knew I would miss most were my staff and APLIC. I was absolutely right. But I’ve had a great time since then getting deeply involved in teaching and learning technology, first at UNC and now at Duke. My current job is to explore new and emerging technologies and how they might be applied to higher education teaching and learning, and I love it. But I still miss the people I met in APLIC. They’re the best!