Capital Librarian

Capital Librarian is the official blog and newsletter feed of the District of Columbia Library Association.

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Cuba's International Book Fair and ALA Tour

By Barbara Conaty

Captivating Cuba has welcomed readers, authors, publishers, and librarians to its International Book Fair in Havana since 1982. This year is the 26th celebration of this stand-out cultural extravaganza organized by the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Book Institute. In a country determined to overcome the haunting effects of the loss of Soviet trading partners and of the embargo enforced by the USA and Israel, the book fair is a family-oriented festival dedicated to the pleasures of reading under the motto “To read is to grow”.

In 2016 after the U. S. embargo was partially lifted, the American Library Association (ALA) sponsored a tour of about 30 people whose goal was to attend the Fair as well as to visit major libraries and other cultural and social institutions. The February 2017 tour included professionals from an array of libraries, three library schools, two professional associations, and a consulting firm. Gathering at the Hotel Nacional, an Art Deco jewel built in 1935 and recognized as a National Monument, tour members travelled from New York, Virginia, Illinois, New Jersey, California, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Texas, New Hampshire, Arizona, and the Virgin Islands.

The Fair originated as part of a government campaign to boost reading. Today, the literacy of Cuba’s population is nearly at 100 percent. Fairgoers could keep track of all events with the help of a daily 4-page tabloid newspaper that minutely detailed the schedule as well as offered longer articles about the day’s noteworthy speakers.  The book fair is enormously popular amongst Cubans of all ages. The 10-day Fair starts at the massive Spanish colonial Fortaleza de San Carlos de La Cabana, with 12 additional venues all around the city for readings by authors and other Fair events. On Feb. 20,  the publishers and the Fair’s libreria packed up their boxes and went on the road to bring the much-desired wares to eager grass-roots readers.  

A very appealing avenue to the Fair is through the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana. This agency is charged with the protection, conservation, restoration of the city and operates its own publishing house, two bookstores, and its own magazine, Opus Habana. The agency hosted 16 author events featuring its own works as well as those of other publishers during the Fair.  

This year’s Fair named Canada as its guest of honor so the Embassy of Canada and its partners invited more than 30 Canadian authors to attend, chief among them Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Thien, Luc Chartrand, and Jocelyne Saucier. Eighteen Canadian publishers filled out the guest list. Canadian tourists constitute 40 per cent of the Cuban tourist business which attracted some 3 million visitors in 2015.

Some 600,000 Habaneros attend the Fair and buy tons of books because the Fair is the only reliable way to obtain new books from governmental and other publishers. Eighty-six publishers from abroad were represented. Total offerings at the Fair were four million copies of items on hand  for sale including novelties such as laminated posters. The dual currency system means that local publishers sell their goods for Cuban pesos  (CUPs) with a typical cover price being less than $1 US. Publishers from Australia, Peru, and other countries sell their books for Convertible Currency (CUCs) pegged to the U. S. dollar so the average price leaps to about $6 US. While there is a currency exchange booth to get the cash needed for purchases, there is no way to use a credit card.  

Taking advantage of the Fortaleza’s stunning architecture and its generous outdoor spaces, many publishers are housed in separate cubicles ranged along cobblestone alleys while others are in shady tents and fresh-air stalls. Many publishers from Latin America and Spain host large and colorful displays. Children’s material of all kinds is especially popular. One kiosk featured the Frankfurt Book Fair but most books for sale were in Spanish. Australia’s Ocean Press featured a stunning photo book entitled, “Resistencia: the peoples of Latin America” with brief texts in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. It features photos of the indigenous peoples of South America in street protests to protect their environments and cultures.

The U. S. Publishing Mission to Cuba featured 400 titles from 31 American publishers in the USA Pavilion. It was organized by Publishers Weekly and the Combined Book Exhibit. Books on display were not for sale and were to be donated to the Cuban Book Institute at the Fair’s end. Cuban and U. S. publishers both urged the end of the economic blockade citing huge interest among their readers and buyers for literature from their Caribbean neighbors just 90 miles away.  For a good look at the Mission’s work, please visit their site as well as view the entrancing video at this link.

The Socialist Workers Party staffed a lively booth with the works of the Pathfinder Press offering timely books in Spanish devoted to the struggles of the working class in Cuba and in the USA. Another kiosk featured a turbaned chef, a woman who stars in her own cooking show on Cuban TV. Her book collected her own recipes for favorite Cuban specialties in an attractive and colorful paperback volume.

One of the most prominent features of the Fair was the tribute to Comandante en Jefe, Fidel Castro, who died in November, 2016. A special presentation of the 90th Anniversary Collection of his 30 books along with a two-day colloquium devoted to his political thought was on the schedule.  

Not to be missed was the booth of Ediciones Vigia which specializes in hand-crafted books limited to runs of 200 copies. Headquartered in Matanzas in central Cuba, this firm makes its own papers, commissions its own art, selects authors from among eager candidates, and is a collector’s delight.  Named after the hurricane lamp that is a necessary safety aid in the stormy season, this firm has for three decades produced three-dimensional works on paper that highlight the creativity and resourcefulness of its contributors.  

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From the Emerging Technologies Committee: Digital Conversion and Preservation Practices: Veterans History Project Interview with Andrew Cassidy-Amstutz

by Saadia Raines

The Veterans History Project was created by Congress in 2000 as a permanent collection of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The collection is a primary source for researchers, educators, and scholars to gain an understanding of military life through the personal accounts of veterans who dedicated their lives to this country. The materials donated to the collection are original, un-edited audio and video-recorded interviews, photographs, letters, diaries, journals, military documents, maps, and unpublished memoirs.  An interview with Andrew Cassidy-Amstutz, archivist for the VHP, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the conversion and preservation practices that bring these stories to life in a digital environment.

SR: What is the initial process of the materials donated to the VHP?  

ACA: There is a six-month processing period that allows VHP staff to fully incorporate collection materials into the LC’s permanent collections. All incoming collections are tracked after VHP receives them and verified to ensure that they meet VHP’s acceptance criteria. As a part of this process, collections that do not meet VHP’s acceptance criteria are returned to the original donor with suggestions on how to create an acceptable submission. Donors and veterans who successfully submit a collection will receive an acknowledgement postcard within eight to ten weeks of receipt.

However, with approximately 75-100 collections arriving each week, it is necessary for VHP staff to place all incoming collections into a queue for eventual processing to maintain the chronology of when they arrived. After all, each collection that VHP receives is important to somebody and VHP staff aim to treat each collection in the same way. After a collection has worked its way to the front of the queue, a processing technician creates a record for the veteran in VHP’s collections database and enters the accompanying information from the Biographical Data Form, Audio and Video Recording Log, Photograph Log, and Manuscript Data Sheet into that record.   After all of this occurs, the newly processed collections are moved to VHP’s climate controlled storage area in the Adams Building. Every day the VHP online searchable database is refreshed with the new collection record information made available for discovery by researchers.

SR: What is involved in digitizing the print and audio-visual materials of the collection?

ACA: The Veterans History Project approaches digital preservation from many different angles. Our initial goals for digital preservation were the long-term preservation of obsolete formats (VHS, DAT, microcassettes, etc.) and curated access via VHP’s online Experiencing War features. This work was primarily accomplished using a combination of internal Library resources and external vendors. Collections were identified for digitization/digital preservation and the entirety of that collection was then made available for public access on VHP’s website.  However, over the past 15 years of VHP’s existence, we have seen more than a few technologies rise in prominence and then fade towards obsolescence such as what is currently occurring with CDs and DVDs. This has necessitated a change in perspective regarding digital preservation within VHP. The bulk of VHP’s A/V materials arrived on either CDs or DVDs and some of them are now over 10 years old.

With no information about the failure rate of the CDs and DVDs in our archive, after I started with VHP in 2012, I assumed that the content of many of our oldest CDs and DVDs would be irretrievable. I instituted a workflow to extract the content from VHP’s oldest CDs and DVDs using a Ripstation (a device that automates the extraction process for batches of optical discs).  This workflow worked well as a proof of concept, but with 75-100 new collections arriving every week and approximately 40,000 optical discs in VHP’s archive, it wasn’t sustainable. Additionally, there were other tape-based carriers in VHP’s archive that were encountering similar difficulties, such as MiniDV, Hi-8, Digital8, etc.

To begin to resolve this, VHP requested monies from the Library to send additional A/V material out to external contractors for digitization/digital preservation. This would allow VHP staff to continue focusing on smaller batches of content to be digitized for our Experiencing War features and reduce the burden on VHP’s existing equipment (which is still regularly needed to verify the contents of incoming A/V collections). Using external contractors also had the additional bonus of allowing VHP to receive access copies and digital preservation masters simultaneously.

After the digitized collections return to the Library, the quality of the digitized copies is reviewed prior to ingest into the Library’s digital asset management system, CTS. After that process is complete, the digital preservation masters are sent to long-term storage and the access copies are made available for public access on VHP’s website. By implementing this new strategy, VHP has been able to jump from approximately 15,000 collections online to approximately 35,000 collections online in the past two years.

SR: What are some of the challenges that are faced in digitizing this large collection?

ACA: Some of the challenges associated with VHP are also some of its strengths as well, in my view. For example, to allow for the widest participation rate possible, the guidelines for submitting content to VHP are very broad to account for differences in equipment availability, technological familiarity, etc. between donors. However, this also means that VHP can truly claim to be representative of the first-person perspective of American veterans from WWI onwards due to our flexibility and our willingness to work with donors on how to submit their collections.

Similarly, VHP is different from a traditional archival collection in many ways. As a part of the American Folklife Center, we are one collection among many (even though we operate much like a separate custodial unit). When VHP receives new collections, they often lack original order and can seem fragmentary when compared against the entirety of a veteran’s service. Additionally, VHP relies on donors to provide the bulk of the descriptive metadata about specific veterans using the forms in our Field Kit. If the information isn’t provided, VHP staff usually do not have the time to search through collections for additional details that might have been unintentionally omitted. Due to this limitation, VHP collections are not fully discoverable since the provided descriptions do not convey the entirety of a collection’s contents.

However, since VHP is responsible for the custody of only one collection within the larger context of the American Folklife Center, we have the ability to process our collections in more depth than a traditional archive. For example, as a part of VHP’s processing workflow, VHP staff place submitted correspondence into separate acid-free bond paper folders and individually label all submitted photographs in our collections database. This allows VHP staff to perform detailed queries against our collections database in response to researcher inquiries.

SR: What advice would you give to librarians and other information professionals interested in managing a digital conversion/preservation project?

ACA: Be prepared to learn! While the basics of digital preservation have been applicable everywhere I’ve worked, each institution has used different workflows, equipment, software, etc. Heading into a job with an open mindset and a flexible attitude is usually as helpful as a familiarity with the institution and its workflows.

In a similar vein, keep copious notes! Unless you are continuing an already established workflow, it will often take a significant amount of trial and error to determine the best tools, settings, or steps to reach your goal. Having a record of what you’re already tried will help in several ways. For example, you won’t accidentally duplicate a previous attempt and you’ll be able to take your notes and document your final workflow more easily than if you attempted to document it from scratch.

Communication is key! While I do spend a portion of each day working individually, I often need to work with other VHP staff, Library of Congress employees, and other professionals to troubleshoot a problem or collaborate on a shared project. Being able to effectively communicate your project or problem to different audiences will not only help them help you more easily, but you also might gain a deeper understanding of your own work as you share it with others.

Finally, be patient! It is not uncommon to experience setbacks even when dealing with an established workflow. Additionally, there are times when your workflow might seem repetitive or monotonous and you might be tempted to take a few shortcuts to speed the process up. Do not follow through with this idea! Significantly more work is involved in correcting a missed step or two than in following the original workflow.

Although, sometimes the work involved in ensuring the digital preservation of the Veterans History Project’s collections can seem never ending, in the end, it is worth it knowing that my work is preserving the stories of America’s veterans for researchers and future generations.

If you would like to learn more about the Veterans History Project, please visit online at www.loc.gov/vets.

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From the Emerging Technologies Committee: E-Discovery and the Burden of Records Management

By Qaddafi Sabree

As librarians and information professionals, many of us can also claim the title of records manager. By serving as the information hub for our respective organizations, we are often charged with storing, gathering, and organizing information in a way that makes it readable and easily accessible. It’s the act of managing and organizing information that gives it context and converts it into knowledge. 

However, the responsibility of managing information extends far beyond the walls of the organization. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows the public to request information from certain government agencies which are mandated to comply with such requests for information. Because of this, many agencies that are required to fulfill FOIA requests have a system in place for dealing with these requests. But what about the private sector? 

Private companies are not required to provide information to the public except when facing a lawsuit. If an organization is being sued, all information relevant to the case is open for discovery. For records managers, the burden begins here. Relevant information can mean anything from email correspondence to social media posts as well as video recordings. Until fairly recently, discovery meant paper documents. Today, with so much electronic information being exchanged, electronic discovery (e-discovery) has become an industry unto itself. Many consulting as well as law firms have dedicated entire practices to e-discovery. The cost of litigation can be very expensive, add an IT component, and the cost soars. 

Archivists know all too well that information comes in many formats. Electronically stored information (ESI) is constantly being upgraded in order to house the gigabytes, terabytes, and even petabytes of data that’s being produced daily. It wasn’t that long ago when a floppy disk was adequate storage for personal information. Now, individuals have entire servers that are used to store personal information. Organizations have had to outsource their storage to companies that provide cloud storage. Government agencies, once skeptical of cloud storage, are now forced to use the cloud due to legal requirements to store information for a set period of time. In 2011, the White House released a memorandum informing government agencies to reform their records management practices. The technological advances in recent years has forced agencies to reexamine the way they manage records.

Technology has been both a blessing and a burden for records managers. How does one comply with an e-discovery request when the requested data consists of text, video, social media, email, and other formats that are constantly emerging? Where does one store all of this data? How can it be provided in one uniform format without it being a huge burden for the records manager(s)? What if the judge requests the data in its native format? Do we keep old hardware? For how long? All of these questions will continue to be discussed and examined throughout the records management community. I hope to answer some of these questions in future articles on emerging technologies. We can only hope that the blessings that technology has bestowed upon us outweigh the burdens as our responsibilities expand.

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From the Emerging Technologies Committee

The Emerging Technologies Committee has been chosen to present at the “Computers in Libraries” conference in March 2017. “Computers in Libraries” continues a long tradition of looking at emerging technologies, and sharing insights from information industry leaders and watchers. Our presentation will focus on robots and artificial intelligence in libraries.

In the 2002 film adaptation of the H.G. Well’s Classic novel “The Time Machine,” the protagonist travels to the public library of the future. However, instead of encountering a human librarian, he is assisted by an artificial intelligence (AI) system able to access a vast amount of information within seconds. Seemingly more emotionally intelligent than a search engine, the system conducts a reference interview and attempts to predict the patron’s next query. Current research suggests this technology may be closer than we think.

Speaking with inventors, librarians, and patrons, the Emerging Technologies Committee seeks to understand how AI is impacting libraries today, and what predictions can be made about the future of AI in libraries.

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Thank you to everyone who attended the panel discussion: "Tips and Tricks for New Managers" featuring Nicole Boynes, Workforce Training & Development Manager at the DC Public Library; Dr. Rondelle Price, Manager of Library Programs for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS); and Joan Weeks, Head of the Near East Section and Turkish Specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress. It was such a lively discussion that attendees wanted to continue asking questions straight through the networking period! Still we met lots of new faces, exchanged business cards and learned the soft skills and practical ways to prepare yourself to transition into management.  If you attended the program or have ideas for other programs, please send comments to Kimberly B. Knight, Career & Leadership Development Director. 

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From Your DCLA President

Years ago when I was a freshman in college I was friends with a senior that was continually going around saying “perception is reality” – meaning that reality was only what someone else perceived it to be. He went on to explain that during his internship he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave work so that he was “perceived” to be hard working. Being a freshman I considered the possibility, however thought there might be more to it when the experienced “hard working” senior didn’t get the job offer he expected upon graduation.

Perception can be a funny thing because it involves someone’s individual interpretation of the world. Whether or not that interpretation is even remotely close to the truth is beside the point – a person may still cling to it as gospel. And a number of things can distort our perception making reality a bit fuzzy, like our attitude, emotions or background. Just like a lightbulb overlaid with a color filter can change the way you see a white light, outside influences (and sometime inside thoughts and feelings) can change our perception of actual events and interactions with other people.

Think of a time when you had absolutely no opinion of someone or something, but after a friend or family member said something good or bad about that said person or thing your opinion suddenly changed. The circumstances didn’t change, only your view of them. Sometimes, if you are not careful, those distorted perceptions can lead you down a path that is nowhere near the reality of the situation, ultimately resulting in a negative outcome.

That’s where the help of others comes in. Colleagues and acquaintances that you may not even know very well or be that close to but whom you respect because of the work you have seen them accomplish or the way they conduct themselves generally can offer insight. People outside our normal circles can help us see things in new ways and a great network can keep you grounded and challenge any distortions that may be impairing your “vision.”

If you are interested in developing a great network, or already have one that you would like to expand upon, join us Thursday, September 15, at Smith Public Trust for our annual membership reception. We’ve got a great year planned and would love for you to be a part of it.

Sincerely, Yvonne Dooley, DCLA President

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2016 DCLA Annual Reception

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Congratulations, Lauren Olson, Recipient of the DCLA Ruth Fine Memorial Student Loan!

Lauren Olson is a school librarian in-training at the University of Maryland's iSchool. Her professional experience ranges from for-profit education consulting, to direct instruction at public and private schools, to nonprofit work in youth justice and advocacy. She aims to internationalize student learning through authentic texts and culturally relevant library instruction. Lauren is currently a Primary School Library Assistant at Washington International School and Assistant Librarian at St. John's College High School.

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Another Successful MKL Day of Service for DCLA & DCPS

By Yvonne Dooley

The day before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was taken from this world forever he made the statement, “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”  On Monday, January 18, 2016, District of Columbia Library Association (DCLA) members came together with District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) staff during this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service embracing this ideal of “dangerous unselfishness.”  Volunteers worked at both C.W. Harris and Houston Elementary School libraries located in Ward 7, one of the most underprivileged wards in the District.  The effort was part of the #MySchoolLibrarian campaign organized by DCLA and DCPS.  The initiative brings together area librarians, information professionals and library supporters to help improve and advocate for D.C. public school libraries.

"DCLA is glad to work with DC Public School libraries for the second year. It is my hope that we will continue this volunteer effort for years to come!" said DCLA Past President, Christina Bailey, an Information Research Specialist at the Congressional Research Service.  The annual service project evolved from the advocacy challenge presented in 2014 by American Library Association President, Courtney Young, and Bailey’s concept of a physical effort to help support and advocate for school libraries.  The partnership between DCLA and DCPS would not have been possible without help from Dr. Rondelle M. Price, Ed.D., Library Programs Manager at the District of Columbia Public Schools.  Rondelle, who coordinated and publicized the event within DCPS, stated afterward, “It was great seeing librarians who serve in different capacities throughout the District of Columbia collaborating for a common cause.”

Whitney Jerome, DCPS Library Media Specialist responsible for both libraries, directed volunteers in shifting, protecting and reorganizing the libraries’ collections.  Participants came from all walks of life within the field of librarianship, including school, public, federal and special libraries.  When asked about the experience, Christine Matthews, Librarian at Bread for the World Institute, stated "Whitney was very organized! When it was apparent that I had no idea how to sort children's books, she had me make bulletin board letters...at least I was somewhat useful!” Matthews also remarked, “What was especially fun was seeing students helping out and enjoying it."  Other volunteers at the MLK Day of Service event included Maphon Ashmon, Emily Clough, Yvonne Dooley, Eboni Henry, Jade Jefferson, Julius Jefferson, Amy Lauder, Jennifer Manning, Aisha Randall, Chamisa Redmond and Faith Williams.  DCLA President, Julius Jefferson, surmised, “Dr. King would be pleased about the active role DCLA members and friends take to support school libraries in honor of his legacy.”

Click here for related post with photos.

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#MySchoolLibrarian

MLK Day of Service, January 19, 2016

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ePADD: Email Archiving, or Offices in the Age of Spam

From the Emerging Technologies Committee, by Paul Kelly

Welcome to what will hopefully be a recurring dispatch from the Emerging Technologies Committee. This month, we wanted to turn DCLA members onto an awesome tool that can help cultural heritage institutions come to grips with email archiving. If you’re involved in electronic records management, read on.

Consider the offices of the past, with filing cabinets, hanging folders, interoffice mail, and external correspondence. Perhaps it’s stating the obvious, but the common element here is paper, and library professionals are historically pretty good at dealing with that. But do you have a work email account? Do you use it for official business? In the past, would that business have been conducted via paper correspondence? If so, what are you currently doing with those emails? Printing them? Nothing at all? What should we be doing? This stuff is important – you’d think we’d be doing something.

ePADD, developed by Stanford University Libraries, allows you to not only create, appraise, and process email archives, but also make them discoverable, all while maintaining the structure and functionality of a live account (minus composition and sending functions). By implementing RM guidelines, such as retention/deposit schedules, deletion of non-essential messages and spam, and sticking to robust folder structures, suddenly email archiving becomes far less daunting. ePADD allows you to either select specific folders for ingest or to capture an account wholesale, and facilitates browsing by correspondent, organization, location or attachment. In addition, it allows full-text searching of the archive, applies LC subject headings to known-entities, and even allows the archivist or librarian to create their own subjects to facilitate cataloging and finding aid creation. And, just like BitCurator (a tool for extracting information from obsolete media), it can redact sensitive information such as phone numbers and other personal information.

But how can you apply this to your own workplace? We’re always talking about money (or lack thereof) in libraries, and budgets are a serious concern. ePADD, however, is free. Download it, and play around with your personal email account; if it uses IMAP (like Google or Windows Mail), you need only enter your username and password to get started. If you’re feeling confident, then attempt to do the same with an imported .MBOX file (a common email archive file format - the ImportExportTools add-on for Thunderbird, or standalone program Emailchemy can help you create one). Use what you learn from your experiments to make the case for email archiving at your institution; convince your coworkers and managers that emails are records, and advocate for electronic records management best practices organization-wide. Have fun experimenting, and thanks for reading!

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Leveraging Data To Lead

From the Emerging Technologies Committee, by Qaddafi Sabree

As librarians and information professionals, we tend to spend a large amount of time working with data. Whether we work in a traditional library, a research center, or a technology firm, data has become an intricate part of our lives.

The Internet has produced mass amounts of digital data in recent years, and with each year, the amount of data online multiplies exponentially. Unfortunately, with all of the data being produced, it’s becoming harder to collate it in a way that makes sense for researchers. The amount of data being produced dwarfs the amount of professionals that will be able to manage it in the coming years. However, as information professionals, we are considered the thought leaders when it comes to managing data. As time goes on, we will be expected to manage excessive amounts of data, and leverage that data in a way that is beneficial to our respective organizations.

On November 5, 2015 the Special Libraries Association (SLA) MD organized a workshop titled “Leveraging Data to Lead.” The workshop was held at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD. The one-day workshop consisted of a keynote address, 12 panels, and several opportunities to interact with corporate sponsors including LAC Group, Zimmerman Associates, Inc., LexisNexis, IEEE and many others.

According to Keynote Speaker Nancy Faget, “The idea of Leveraging Data to Lead came from SLA MD’s co-sponsorship with the FEDLINK Technology Working Group during a workshop in Spring 2015 called Bibliometrics and Research Assessment. That event was created by Informationist Chris Belter, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) library.  This event drew 150 participants from 4 countries. It was the type of event that NIH had been hosting intermittently, so we understood there was a growing interest in the topic.”

“Leveraging Data to Lead” had international appeal as well, attracting people from abroad as well as from across the country.  Many of the participants had varied backgrounds such as data scientists, programmers, as well as those in risk management.

One of the panels in session #1 was titled “Jobs in Data Analytics.” Organizations from the federal government to academia and the private sector are all clamoring for data analysts. Karen White of LAC Group mentioned the numerous opportunities that are available for those who wish to pursue data analytics as a career. With all of the unstructured data such as video, social media, photographs, etc., there is a need for data wranglers in every organization.

Traditional libraries have always had a need for data managers whether it’s academic libraries that are primarily interested in the scholarly publishing process, benchmarking statistics and measuring research impact. Law libraries, who regularly analyze usage and produce metrics to benefit their organizations, as well as public libraries, which are systematically involved in analyzing demographics to design services for patrons. However, as innovators in the field, the panelists introduced unique and innovative ways to analyze data.  

“The only gap that appears between the traditional uses for data and the types of presentations from the Leveraging Data event might be the many emerging ways that libraries and librarians are applying technologies to the analytical process or visualizing data to enhance understanding of the data,” says Nancy Faget.

In Session #2 there was a panel called “Impact Metrics and Data Visualization.” In this particular session, Susan Makar and Amanda Malanowski from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as well as Dr. Mark Livingston from the Naval Research Laboratory demonstrated interesting ways data visualization can be used to analyze data and present information in a unique and creative way that tells a story, thus allowing the user to make strategic decisions that will affect the foreseeable future. This can be used to predict things such as climate change, population growth, sales statistics, etc.

The Leveraging Data to Lead workshop was followed by the Leveraging Thomson-Reuters Data webinar on December 11th. The webinar continued where the workshop left off, allowing the presenters to go in depth about methodology, results, and the impact of data analytics.

For librarians and information professionals looking to learn more about how to leverage data, SLA Maryland and the FEDLINK Technology Working Group will be collaborating on future events, training, and webinars. More information can be found on the SLA Maryland discussion list and the Leveraging Data Google Group.

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Congratulations: Eastman Grant Winner, Paul J. Kelly

The Student Financial Aid committee of the District of Columbia Library Association has selected  Paul J. Kelly as the winner of the Eastman Grant to attend an American Library Association conference for the firs time. Paul is a digital archivist at Catholic University of America Library and a 2013 graduate of the CUA Library School. He plans to attend the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Boston and is interested in library advocacy, fundraising, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.

Thanks to the D.C. Chapter of the Women's National Book Association, provider of the Eastman Grant, and congrats to Paul!

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From Your DCLA President

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer. This summer the DCLA Board has been at work planning an eventful year starting in September. In July, the Board met at the ALA Washington office for a retreat and strategic planning session that was both productive and energizing. The Board has planned a number of activities that will support the professional development of its membership. Some of the programs planned this fall include the Fall Membership Reception, Demystifying ALA, DCLA Leadership Workshop, Interviewing and Resume Writing, and Intellectual Freedom 101.

In addition to these exciting programs, the Board’s capstone effort will be dedicated to reinvigorating the Chapter’s mentoring efforts. In May, the Board called for all members who wanted to be a mentor and heard from many of you who are willing to share their time and experiences. In September, we plan to have our first Mentor-Mentee workshop. I am calling for all DCLA members who want a mentor to contact me by email at the address listed below.

The success of our association begins with your active participation. I look forward to seeing you all next month at of Fall Membership Social.

Sincerely,

Julius C. Jefferson Jr., 2015-2016 DCLA President

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Want to be involved? Join a DCLA Committee right now.

Members are needed for the following committees, please email the person listed below for more information:

Advocacy-Eboni Henry, D.C. Public Library

Annual Banquet-Yvonne Dooley, Library of Congress

Awards-Christina Bailey, Library of Congress

Capital Librarian Newsletter-Victor Benitez, D.C. Public Library

Career and Leadership Development-Kimberly Knight, D.C. Public Library

Emerging Technologies-Qaddafi Sabree, Howard University Libraries

Finance-TaChalla Ferris, D.C. Library

Fundraising and Sponsorship-Christina Bailey, Library of Congress

Intellectual Freedom-Contact Julius C. Jefferson Jr., Library of Congress

Joint Spring Workshop-Contact Christina Bailey, Library of Congress

Membership-Bobbie Dougherty, D.C. Public Library

National Library Legislative Day (NLLD)-Teresa Boyd, Smithsonian Libraries

Nominations and Elections-Amanda Wilson, Department of Transportation

Programing-Yvonne Dooley, Library of Congress

Student Financial Assistance-Jennifer Manning, Congressional Research Service

Website-Jamilla Coleman, D.C. Public Library