COSWL Cause

Dr. Lynn Westbrook, Assistant Professor at the School of Information of the University of Texas is the 2008 winner of the Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research presented by the Library Research Round Table [LRRT]

The 2009 recipient is Lynn Westbrook for her work on “Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case on Intimate Partner Violence Survivor,” Library Quarterly 78 (3): 237-261. The study examines the role public libraries can play in providing the information needs of victims of intimate partner violence. Data was collected from two populations and two data-gathering methods and analyzed through the lens of everyday-life-information-seeking theory.

The Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research is given to the author(s) of a research article published in English during the calendar year and nominated by any member of LRRT or by editors of research journals in the field of library and information studies.

LRRT was founded in 1968 to contribute toward the extension and improvement of library research by providing public program opportunities for describing and evaluating library research projects and for disseminating their findings. LRRT is dedicated to informing and educating ALA members regarding research techniques and their usefulness in obtaining information. The information must help users reach administrative decisions and solve problems and expand the theoretical base of the field by serving as a forum for discussion and action on issues related to the literature and information needs for the field of library and information science.

ALA Council Candidates - 2009

For a few years now I have been putting together a list of ALA Council candidates for the SRRT Feminist Task Force (FTF) and shared it with others -- here it is again. The list is based on the affiliations candidates put in their statements. This is not an endorsement of any candidates.
This list includes candidates who state that they are members of FTF, SRRT, ACRL WSS, COSWL, GLBTRT, REFORMA, CALA, BCALA, APALA, and AILA.

I may have missed some of the candidates because my eyes blurred a bit scanning the statements and the many acronyms. If I left you or someone else who should have been on this list off please let me know and I will send out an updated list in the very near future.

Please read the candidates statements before voting so that you will know more about them and will really be voting for someone that you want to serve on ALA Council. You do not need to vote for 34 people. In fact, your vote is stronger if you only vote for a few people; those that you really want to serve on ALA Council.

ALA Council Candidates

Rose Albritton: BCALA
Jose Aponte: REFORMA
Mario A. Ascencio: REFORMA, GLBTRT
Valerie Bell: BCALA
Thaddeus P. Bejnar: APALA, REFORMA
Bart Birdsall: GLBTRT
Brett Bonfield: SRRT
Michael Golrick: BCALA
Mario M. Gonzalez: SRRT, REFORMA
Dora Ho: CALA, APALA
Alys Jordan: BCALA
Alfred Kagan: SRRT, BCALA
Johan Koren: AILA
Peter McDonald: SRRT
Michael J. Miller: GLBTRT, SRRT
Leslie Monsalve-Jones: AILA, REFORMA
Virginia B. (Ginny) Moore: SRRT, BCALA
Eva D. Poole: BCALA
James Teliha: GLBTRT
Kelvin Watson: BCALA
Shixing Wen: CALA
Diana Yuhfen Wu: CALA

Have fun voting!

Rachel Walden, best known for demanding answers and action in the POPLINE abortion controversy is a 2009 Library Journal" Mover and Shaker." In spring 2008, POPLINE, the major database on global reproductive health, limited researchers' ability to search on “abortion” by making it a stopword. Its rationale: USAID funding put it under the global “gag rule” restricting discussion of abortion. “As a librarian,” says Walden, “I was angry that access to information was being quietly restricted based on a political agenda.”

Walden spread the word on her Women's Health News blog, providing clear explanations and contacting reproductive rights and feminist activists. “This was not just an issue for librarians,” recalls Walden, but “for everybody who cares about reproductive rights and the effects of the global gag rule.”

The POPLINE controversy sums up Walden's ongoing mission “to connect people with health-related information.” For Walden, librarianship and blogging boil down to one thing: “here's some information, let me share it with you.” Blogging offers “the added layer of my own commentary.” Her background as a medical librarian lets her use the skills that support evidence-based medicine to evaluate medical news and statistics, helping readers to “sift through the media and talk around women's health, particularly politically charged issues.”

Walden considers “evangelizing about librarians” part of her blogging. Readers sometimes email asking for resources, and, during the POPLINE discussions, “I had a couple remark, 'Don't mess with the librarians,'” she notes. It's “just a normal thing—I'm a librarian, I do this blog, I can find information on things.” And now she's blogging on Our Bodies, Our Blog (www.ourbodiesourblog.org) and writing occasionally for Women's Health Activist, the newsletter of the National Women's Health Network.

Ken Middleton, reference librarian at Middle Tennessee State University, will receive the 2009 ABC-CLIO Online History Award for his professional achievement in online historical reference highlighted by his development of Discovering American Women’s History Online, a web-based historical research tool.
Middleton and Discovering American Women’s History Online were selected for the site’s important role as a comprehensive gateway site to more than 400 digital collections and repository websites—including Stanford’s Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls, Cornell’s Triangle Factory Fire and the Library of Congress Veterans History Project—documenting the history of women in the United States. From this centralized resource, site users are offered numerous access points such as subject headings, formats and other resource discovery features to uncover primary documents in more than 40 formats, including photographs and artifacts. The breadth of the collections available through Discovering American Women’s History Online also means that the site offers access to more than women’s history—its sources cover all 50 states and dates ranging from the 1600s to the 2000s.

The fifty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women will be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York from 2 to 13 March 2009. Priority theme: The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.

International Women's Day [IWD] is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.