Ruth Sandor

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and social science indexes, including the “Women and Development” collection, which offered many items that were unpublished and unavailable elsewhere.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!

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!

Chris Matthews

I joined APLIC-I in June of 1996 as I started work as a consultant, primarily organizing collections for small nonprofits, particularly organizations working on health or gender issues in developing countries. APLIC primarily kept me in touch with librarians in the field, gave me moral support, and helped keep me up to date in information trends.

When I returned as librarian at Bread for the World, I had contacts I felt comfortable asking for help from. Workshops and luncheons kept me abreast. I usually came back from gatherings being very grateful for my relatively low demanding job, thinking “I’m so glad I’m not in their shoes! How do they manage??”

All professional contacts/associations provide invaluable support, and APLIC is good at that.

Bread for the World Institute, Volunteer archivist

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!

Anne Ilacqua

When I first joined APLIC, I was hired at Brown University Demography Library for the experience I had acquired as head of a special library in a large university. I had collection development experience, but the field I was entering was new to me. Fortunately, Carol Knopf, an APLIC member, was staying with the Demography Library and she was familiar with the faculty and students and with the collection. Also, the APLIC listserv produced prompt leads and answers to questions, and lending of unique materials.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to serve as a Board Member and, also, as a Co-President in charge of planning an Annual Meeting. In so doing, I acquired additional skills, perhaps too numerous to mention. I also recruited new members, by extolling the values of belonging to APLIC. Touring others’ libraries provided a valuable opportunity to spark ideas upon returning to one’s space. I am very grateful to the Population Studies Centers Directors for including and funding and providing meeting rooms for their librarians to meet at the Annual PAA Meetings.

Meetings with APLIC members from all over the country were occasions to look forward to, for the congeniality shared by like-minded, smart, friendly professionals in a specialized field of librarianship. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of this organization and I learned a lot from colleagues’ presentations and informal conversations.

I have been retired ten years. The library was disbanded (sigh) when Pop studies got a totally renovated bldg. on campus (a big deal!). I was kept on, as Information Specialist. When I retired, a Rockefeller Library librarian was assigned to assist students and faculty at Pop. Studies Ctr. Recently, I chatted with a former colleague still working in the larger University realm. It was somewhat troubling to learn that the reference collection had been moved to the stacks and the reference area converted to comfy chairs and nooks. One can imagine students reading, but more likely laptops and phones than books! That said, I embrace the world of electronic resources, which I take advantage of, daily.

With my husband, I have traveled to many places since retiring in 2006. Most notably, we spent a month in China, where he lectured at three universities. We were resident in Wuhan for two weeks and in beautiful Zhuhai, as well. As tourists, on that trip we spent a week in Beijing and a few days in Hong Kong. We cruised the Mediterranean, out of Barcelona, and we have forthcoming trips planned. Joe and I took a Viking cruise, last Fall 2015, from Budapest to Amsterdam. Also, we have rented a boat and cruised the Shannon River with son, grandson and daughter-in-law.  In 2017 we plan to travel to Russia and Scandinavia and to the National Parks in the US.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016
2:00 PM-3:00 PM

Speaker: Alvin Hutchinson, Smithsonian Libraries

Developing new services is key to the survival of science libraries in the future. Because much of the scientific literature is available directly to scientists online rather than going through the librarian as a broker, it will be additional services provided by librarians that define the library’s utility. Alvin Hutchinson will describe the life cycle of new service development and highlight several new services that are taking place in research libraries today.

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

Self-service in libraries most pronounced in science libraries, but the Internet provides opportunity for librarians to develop new services.

Publication Services:

• Smithsonian used free bibliographic services (Pub med, Google Scholar, BioOne, etc.) to produce staff publication lists i- house vs. using more expensive outside vendors.
• Signing up for e-alerts via Google Scholar is a great tool.
• A staff publication list is good for the office of public affairs and development office. This is sent to the museum’s management with copy to the scientist with a link to the article. If the information is put in central database, it can be reused for many different purposes, including posting to website.

Repository Services:

• The open access movement in the 1990s resulted in many repository services. Often these services were built, but not used.
• The staff bibliography can (partially) populate the repository.
• Copyright and embargo issues can be tracked (easier for federal employees).
• Most repositories allow user to “darken” the entry.
• Get repository content indexed by Google Scholar, adhering to metadata compliance. Authors are keen to integrate publications into the science publishing ecosystem.
• Identifiers!  It’s important to have DOI, Cross Ref, and ORCID identifiers in repositories and in the organization’s press so different machine systems can talk to each other.

Additional Publishing Support:

• Librarians can be advocates regarding predatory journals.
• Scientific Data and Metadata – Data management plan now required by government-funded work. Smithsonian has work group that provides guidance to staff. Journal of EScience Librarianship.

Alt Metrics to track social media. Smithsonian has contracted to track activity by Smithsonian authors.

As part of APLIC’s 2015 Annual Conference, Janine Schooley shared how Project Concern International’s ‘Leveraging Knowledge’ and related strategic directions have utilized various approaches such as Chatter, InnovAtion, and regional workshops this past year to share promising practices and lessons learned both internally and externally for optimal efficiency, effectiveness, thought leadership, and performance.

Jean Sack provided her notes about the session:

Founded in 1969 by Dr. Turpin, Coronado Island Pediatrician who went into Mexico to save two children from pneumonia and began his outreach into Mexico, Vietnam War, Hong Kong (floating clinics) Walks for Mankind, and very targeted community interventions with program implementation.

Community-based integrated work for strengthening local people to solve their own problems. Funded US contracts, 60 years office in San Diego, DC office, now in 16 developing countries and US/Mexico border. Will have their PCI Global Summit in DC in early May.

She has worked 15 years and oversees food/nutrition, gender, innovation, local capacity strengthening, documentation, monitoring evaluation report to Janine. Masters in Child and Maternal Health. Janine found commonality with most all the APLIC members’ and their organizations, with many PCI collaborations.

“get our fieldstaff to document lessons learned!” How do we examine impact post-project when funding ceases? 7 Strategic Directors = by 2016 want to have more KM to connect remote locations with different aspects championed by “prime movers” and executive partners. Levering knowledge team and innovations went to a Dreamforce Conference to learn about Salesforce along with a Gender champion.

Chatter app (twitter / Facebook) comes with a database called Salesforce – for nonprofits (has dashboard to track users, groups, feeds, top users, largest groups, total group feed posts)

Sharing Tacit Knowledge (70%). Used internally so that staff are linked and feel connected/cohesive with trusted information – decentralized so all employees can contribute/share project insights regardless of location or title, open access, collaborative rather than top down. Janine can post, so also can a driver in India. Used during earthquake in Bihar who used Facebook to communicate “safe”. Recent example of India’s January announcement of polio-free was applauded by India PCI Director Ed Schol. Comes with a timed feed settings if you don’t want continuous. Email still used normally and not replaced by Chatter which will go to targeted staff in communications. Adoption = Value > Pain / worthwhile greater than pain. New groups act like CoPs. A monthly Chatter King is named from stats and gets symbol of power (gamification). Used to “take the pulse via polling” via chatter on smart phones. The phone works better in low bandwidth areas. Breaking down barriers to far corners. Success in increased awareness of programs and resources but there are IT Gold Standards but also openness to piggy backing to use Chatter more widely in organization. HR and Finance use Salesforce configurations with tinkering possibilities, new business and fundraising and innovAtion (A for adaption

@snapshots from the field testimonials or photos from the field feed into marketing and communications (85% of content)

Sharing Explicit Knowledge(30%). Can strategic information be better shared rather than just with donors? No Intranet, just email and chatter. Growth is from program funding, not in effective fund-raising. Janine says don’t assume anything but do capitalize on natural information hubs/people with a good communications strategy. They have hired a communications staff to link to more technical information on the website, not just marketing. Program quality alignment needs linking with insights from chatter.

Embedding InnovAtion = Makes current practice obsolete, improves value by 50%, provides PCI with unique product, skills, experiences benefitting beneficiaries and donors.   Need to incorporate the feedback loop from lessons learned from projects into the New Programs area to avoid reinventing wheels and to remain competitive. Putting documents on a shared drive. Physical resources library was dismantled because it wasn’t being used and no staff responsible. New Marketing VP is working on branding. Do perform literature searches, local focus groups, and assessments of projects but hard to capture total program implementations.

Q&A

How can we integrate what we have learned? Document databases (eg Library catalogs) and sharing (eg APLIC listserv).

1. Theory of change. One of the donors is expecting PCI to produce logframes which is pushing evidence base to show logical connections of purpose and outcomes with evidence. Gates expects delivery research.

Q How were the innovations rolled out to get “buy-in” from staff?

Q Could PCI join APLIC and have a staff person visit some of our DC members to learn? Jessica in San Diego is a possibility.

Q are libraries outdated?

Q sounds like you need an information specialist to gather those innovation insights to get them dispersed to the staff.

A need a more senior strategist to do this

Q we at FHI360 are still struggling to pull out the assets using yammer and intranet.