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

Wednesday, March 30, 2016
10:45 AM-12:00 PM

Facilitators:

Julia Cleaver, Ipas
Sarah Burns, Pathfinder
Christopher Lindahl, EngenderHealth

Communities of Practice (COPs) are groups of people who share an interest (technical or professional) and share knowledge, information and experience in their group. This session was designed to give participants a stronger sense of community with their APLIC colleagues, and to come away understanding:

• How APLIC can be an important professional community
• How to engage outside of conferences and
• What tools are available to support community engagement

Click here to view a PDF of the facilitators’ handout

During this session, participants were able to identify the roles that they were most likely to play in the APLIC CoP (participant vs. lurker, both of which have value in any CoP), identify a list of potential “tech buddies” (technical moderators) for APLIC virtual gatherings, and discuss topics for future monthly virtual gatherings.  These topics included:

• Copyright and the RightFind tool
• Citation software
• Systematic collection of grey literature
• Organizing one’s workflows: KanBan Flow
• Web conferencing tools
• ResearchGate
• ILL

Participants also generated other ideas:

• An APLIC book in celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary
• “50 Stories” from APLIC
• APLIC panel at 2017 Global Health Mini-University
• APLIC flyer to disseminate at events
• Form a consortium for subscriptions
• Member welcomer
• New member welcome packet

Tuesday, March 29, 2016
“Lightning Talk”

Speaker: Allison Long, Ipas

In this session, Allison Long demonstrated how anyone can use PowerPoint and other easy-to-use tools to create fun and informative videos for results dissemination, library services promotion, or anything else their heart desires.

Many thanks to Liz Nugent for sharing her notes, below:

Reports can often become tl;dr (too long; didn’t read)

Why use video?

• “Video has quickly become one of the most impactful ways to speak to an audience.”
• Research indicates that we absorb video content 60,000 times faster than if read.

Pro tips for creating great videos:

• Keep it visual – less text, more images, use animations and transitions
• Keep it short – 4 minutes or less
• Make it pretty!
• Free online tools: Piktochart, Jing (free program that allows you to cut images and make videos to insert into presentation, similar to Snippet)
• Tools within PowerPoint: Insert/SmartArt; format painter/double click on format painter keeps format painter on; Arrange tools/selection pane, bring forward
  Transitions tab/crush/origami/page turn, etc. Pick one or two to use.
• Make you PowerPoint presentation into movie: first record timings, then record audio, then save it as a movie.
• View as a slide show, then record slide show (you can do one slide at a time). Insert audio (Google “royalty free music,” or use www.bensound.com. Set to “Play in background.”
  Make it into video (Fille ->Export -> make into video -> use MP4 format).  You can use Windows Movie Maker to format the video, which produces the correct size for YouTube, mobile viewing , etc.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016
“Lightning Talk”

Speaker: Mary White, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

This session covered the NIH and other Federal Public Access Policies and their compliance requirements, including a hands-on tour of the bibliography management and compliance monitoring functions in My NCBI. The session also introduced the new NIH Biographical Sketch format requirements effective for NIH and AHRQ grant applications.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016
“Lightning Talk”

Speaker: Elana Broch, Princeton University

“I’ve come to embrace Zotero as a great bibliographic citation manager. It’s free and works on both Macs and PCs. You can sync across machines, save PDFs of full text, and photos. Its write-and-cite capability is very user friendly.”

Elana Broch offered a demonstration of Zotero and discussed many of the features that make it a usable and worthwhile citation management program for students and information professionals.

Many thanks to Liz Nugent for sharing her notes, below:

Click here to view a PDF of Ms. Broch’s handout

Some additional key points about Zotero:

• At Princeton and other libraries, Zotero talks to the library and databases
• Many people are moving from EndNote to Zotero
• It is easy to transfer data from one citation system to Zotero
• Zotero is open source, and is free
• See costs of institutional storage plans here
• Users can download photos, add notes

Monday, March 29, 2016
“Lightning Talk”

Speaker: LiMin Fields, PAI

This short demonstration of PAI’s intranet portal included a quick tour of the PAI homepage, professional development resource page, and the shared organizational calendar.  The portal was developed to support staff internal information needs and influence organizational behavior by documenting and communicating key business processes, policies and standards.

Many thanks to Liz Nugent for sharing her notes, below:

• PAI’s intranet is referred to as their “Portal”
• It was deliberately kept simple in design, and the staff’s most-used items were put up first
• PAI’s Board has their own portal
• The Portal is used as a work tool and tracker (e.g. finance forms), includes the Smartsheet (excel-like online tool used for strategic planning, etc.), and allows resource sharing
• It was built between January and November 2014, and was launched in December 2014
• It is maintained in-house with occasional vendor support
• Everything on the Portal should have value added, be up to date, and cross-organizational
• It includes links to everything the organization needs and uses; it is meant to be a one-stop shop
• It also includes a staff directory, bios & birthdays, staff travel information , non-work Tips/Asks, new employee page, HR handbook and policies, Admin ZenDesk, PAI jargon, Email Web access, Egnite online file share, IT ZenDesk, and an archive of PAI pubs