UCLA LISAAA Class Notes

Alexandria, Virginia, August 13, 2009– Richard Geiger is the 2009 recipient of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) John Cotton Dana Award. The prestigious award recognizes a lifetime of achievement as well as exceptional service to special librarianship and the information profession.

The SLA Awards Committee cited Geiger’s leadership in the profession and volunteer work at all levels of the association during more than 30 years of membership. “Richard’s colleagues in the News Division, in the San Francisco Chapter and from across the association came out in droves to support his nomination, and I applaud the committee’s unanimous decision to award him this much deserved honor,” said 2009 SLA President Gloria Zamora .

Geiger’s SLA leadership includes serving as president of the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter (1991-92) and chair of the News Division (1988). He has also chaired association-level committees (PR Committee in 1993-94, Strategic Planning in 1994-95, Finance Committee in 2001-2004 and Nominating Committee, 2007-2008) and served two terms on the SLA Board of Directors, as director (1993-96), and then treasurer (2001-2003).

“If ever there was an all-star SLA member, Richard Geiger is it. He has been at the heart, and provided a lot of the brains, of the News Division for more than 25 years. He embodies the essence of what membership in SLA and the News Division is about–helping one another, providing insights and serving as an example of the finest practice. If you call on him, Richard is there,” said Nora Paul of the News Division.

Nominators also wrote about his influence on news librarianship and many SLA members over the years. According to Barbara Semonche, 2009 SLA Hall of Fame inductee, “Richard has long been a mentor to so many of us, encouraging us to participate in leadership roles at all levels of the association. He is very approachable, eager to listen and respond to neophytes and veterans alike.”

Geiger began his library career as a library assistant in the University of California library system. While attending library school, he became interested in special libraries and joined the student chapter of SLA in 1974. After earning a degree in library and information science from the University of California , Los Angeles , he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and was soon working as a librarian at the San Francisco Chronicle. After a four-year stint as library manager of the San Jose Mercury-News, he returned to the Chronicle as their library director until his recent retirement.

Longtime colleague and past SLA President Donna Scheeder noted that Geiger’s accomplishments include contributing to early automation of the Chronicle’s library and building of a digital photo archive as well as negotiating a cost- and time-saving group registration process for the newspaper’s copyrights.

In 2005 when Geiger was awarded the Joseph F. Kwapil Award, the News Division’s highest honor, Phil Bronstein, the editor of the Chronicle said, “The entire newsroom is profoundly grateful for the enormous service, skill, and professionalism that he provides for us daily. We simply could not do our jobs without Richard and the staff he oversees. He is also unfailingly kind, a characteristic that we cherish and that makes the newsroom a better place to work.”

Geiger was presented with his award in front of thousands of SLA members during the 2009 SLA Awards Ceremony on June 14 during the opening general session of the SLA Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO in Washington , D.C. To view the video shown during the awards ceremony about Geiger and his achievements visit SLA-TV.

Update: I am now Research, Instruction & Collection Development librarian at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library, specializing in Communications, Journalism, and Film.

I’ve been working as a reference and instruction librarian at College of San Mateo, just south of San Francisco, for almost two years now. Being at a community college has a lot of advantages. I’ve formed close relationships with other faculty and really feel like one of their peers. (I’ve been very involved with learning communities on campus, for example.) And the benefits can’t be beat, especially the 15 weeks or so off a year (though I’ve been working part-time over the summer to keep myself sane). The downside is, I’m spread thin and sometimes feel likethere isn’t enough time to do any one thing well. As only one of two full-time librarians, I do reference, instruction (on campus and online credit classes and orientations), collection development, Web development, database maintenance and vendor relations, interlibrary loan –pretty much everything imaginable except cataloging. I do much more teaching and public speaking than I ever expected (or wanted) to. But overall, this has been a great first library job: intense and full of learning opportunities.

     I began my formal relationship with rare books and manuscripts as a student assistant at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA 1958-61. After graduation in 1961, and following a year as the first Lilly Library Fellow in Rare Book Librarianship at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, I became a manuscript cataloguer at the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery 1962-63. Between August 1963 and 1980, I was the Assistant, later, the Associate Director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

     My duties at these various institutions were chiefly concerned with the acquisition and accessioning of rare books and manuscripts throughout the United States and abroad. This included bibliographical searching and ordering from antiquarian booksellers. While at Yale University, along with administrative duties, I served 17 years on the Beinecke Library’s Rare Book Purchasing Committee; as the Library’s coordinator for the production of four of its major publications: The printed catalogues of the Mellon alchemical manuscripts, Carey Playing Card Collection, Gimbel Dickens Collection, facsimile edition of Antonio Pigafetta’s account of Magellan’s circumnavigation; as adviser to the Jared Eliot Associates (undergraduate book collecting club) and Chair, judges committee of the Adrian Van Sinderin Prizes in Book Collecting. As Associate Director, I was the library’s administrative officer responsible for managing the deep-freezing program. See The Yale Non-toxic Method of Eradicating Book eating Insects by Deep-freezing. Restaurator 6: 147-164 1984 Munksgaard, Copenhagen.

     From 1980-84, I was employed as Associate, Laurence Witten Rare Books, Southport, Connecticut, where I was associated with the proprietor in all phases of the business: Buying and selling, bidding at auction, writing and editing catalogue descriptions, managing production of printed sale catalogues, researching dealer’s catalogues and auction records, pricing stock and preparing valuations for clients. In 1985, I began my book and manuscript appraisal business. Since then, I have remained active and have prepared several hundred large and small appraisals for libraries, institutions, and individuals. I am a member of the Grolier Club of New York City, the Yale Club of New York City, Mory’s Association, New Haven, CT, Club of Odd Volumes of Boston, MA, Elizabethan Club, New Haven, CT, Columbiad Club, Meriden, CT, and Associate Fellow, Trumbull College, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

email address: bk.titles@comcast.net

Basically since 1990 I have been the local history librarian at the Pasadena Public Library, a city which has been blessed with a great deal of history and until recently many local newspapers that covered it.  Taming that informational treasure trove has been a major professional occupational interest of mine along with also dealing with a delightfully abbreviated photo collection.

Non-professionally,  I have drawn on my UCLA years in two main projects.  "Oh No, Not Emily!" is a musical that explores what happens when a con man sells a forged Emily Dickinson poem to a very modern English Department at a very large, very modern university located somewhere near an ocean.  It was recently nominated for a Just Plain Folks Best Musical Album.

More recently I have written and self-published over the internet a novella called "ICE Girls: What Managers Can Learn from the Story of the ‘Little Match Girl’ by One Who Was There".  It looks at that classic story of Hans Christian Andersen from the point of view of management and is in the "tradition" of a self-help management manuals such as sacred cows make great burgers and moving the cheese to excite the mouse.

Only its meant to be funny.

Dan is currently beginning work on his new project "The Sorrows of Young Werther’s (Therapist)" which he insists is a very funny idea.

Most people, so far, disagree.

Dan McLaughlin
355 S. Madison Ave. #220
Pasadena CA 91101
libraryguy@earthlink.net

http://www.ohnonotemily.com/
http://www.ohnonotemily.com/icegirls.html
http://www.digstation.com/DamMcLaughin
http://cdbaby.com/cd/danmclaughlin
http://www.createspace.com/3346080

Since I graduated in 1998, I spent a couple of years in a number of part-time positions at different institutions such as California State University, Northridge, El Segundo Public Library and the University of Arizona.  Since 2000, I have been the Information Literacy and Technology Librarian at Chabot College, a community college, in Hayward, California.  I achieved tenure in 2004.  I have been serving on the Electronic Access and Resources Committee for California Community Colleges since 2003, Secretary of California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction (CCLI) since 2006, and Secretary of East Bay for Democracy, (a grassroots Progressive Democratic club) also since 2006.  I also serve on a number of committees at my college including the Web Portal Planning Core Committee, the Distance Education Committee, and the Technology Committee. When I am not maintaining or creating web pages, reviewing, evaluating, writing and selecting databases, teaching, providing reference, or doing a number of other Library duties,  I try to find time to travel just for fun.  And if I cannot go on a land tour to Scandinavia (as I’ve had in 2007), I do my best to enjoy the sights and sounds of the vibrant Bay Area where I live.  I still hope to get back to my writing (I also have a MFA degree in that), but for now, I continue to read, when I’m not spending way too much time surfing the Web.

Norman Buchwald
25555 Hesperian Blvd.
Hayward, CA 94545
Office: (510)723-6993
FAX:    (510)723-7005

http://chabotlibrary.blogspot.com/

http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/

http://www.chabotcollege.edu/Library/abby/iskills.html

http://home.comcast.net/~normanbuchwald/

I started working for the County of Los Angeles Public Library as a Children’s Librarian after I graduated.  I did that for 2 years at Hawthorne and Norwalk and then took an In-Charge position at the Paramount Library.  After 3 years with the County I quit to stay home with my children.  When they were older I started working half time as a Reference Librarian at the Torrance Public Library and I was there for 15 years.  During that time I got involved in local politics and served on the Torrance School Board for 8 years until I retired from that.  I left Torrance PL to semi-retire and work a few hours a week at the Redondo Beach Public Library but after a year or so I got bored and decided that I wanted to get back in to library work full time.  I came back to the County of Los Angeles Public Library System and I am now a Librarian V serving as Community Library Manager of the West Covina Library, one of the 5 Regional Headquarters libraries in the County system.  We have kept libraries in the family because my daughter Sara is Executive Director of the Long Beach Public Library Foundation.

Beth Wilson

bwilson@library.lacounty.gov

The annual LISAA Spring Dinner will be held on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:30 PM. The dinner will take place at the UCLA Faculty Center and will feature guest speaker Max Marmor ‘87, President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. To reserve your ticket, please visit https://giving.ucla.edu/lisaa/dinner or call (310) 206-0375.

I have spent nearly all my career in the field of IT and am currently working an MS in Software Engineering at CSU Fullerton.  I am married and my wife and I belong to our four cats, and we live in West LA, just a brisk walk away from UCLA.  For my current academic endeavor I was naturally inspired to draw on my experience at UCLA.  My current software engineering project is to design and prototype a system to provide quantitative analysis of the variance between acquisitions and what patrons actually use.  For the present, I am limiting this to acquisition events vs circulation events, but the potential should be there to go well beyond those.

At long last the co-blog manager has secured his first full time position after working as a library temp for the past year.  After an extensive job search throughout the DC and SoCal areas I have started a position as a Reference Librarian at the US Trademark Law Library.  My library is part of the US Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, VA, a vast new complex with over 10,000 employees.  Althought the USPTO is a Federal Agency, my position is through the Artic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), a corporation based in Alaska that manages a couple of federal libraries amongst other things.  My position involves conducting research on potential trademarks for trademark lawyers.  The work is mostly done online and communicated mostly through email, although there is also some interlibrary loan, information literacy instruction, and possibly some web design.  Learning a lot about online search databases and glad I got to learn about Dialog from Professor Maack in the reference class.