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She lives in a 1950s ranchstyle home in the Midwest. She owns a collection of vintage Pyrex dishes in primary colors. She's a librarian, and she works at a trolley [...]

One majored in English at an American university, the other practiced medicine in China. Their career trajectories, seemingly pointed in different directions, ultimately brought them together--both are now earning their [...]

Why did the squirrel bury an acorn? To give a zoologist food for thought about her future, which later took a sharp turn toward library school. Daureen Nesdill studied the [...]

How diverse is your library or information center? Do you actively recruit and hire employees with the goal of increasing the representation of women and minorities? Is diversity a priority [...]

Bibiliometrics are measures that are used to assess the influence or impact of an author and his/her works. How fitting, then, that a paper about bibliometrics would be judged the [...]

She was named a 'rising star' in her profession just five years out of graduate school, then followed it up toy receiving a prestigious award from a 600-year-old organization that [...]

How do things happen? Why do things happen? These aren't the kinds of questions most librarians ask--they help find the answers for those who do ask them--but they've helped David [...]

Many librarians developed their 'itch' by visiting libraries or bookstores as children, browsing the stacks and pernaps ever plopping themselves down on the flow to flip through the books they'd [...]

Ten time zones. 14,150 kilometers. The world's largest ocean. And, of course, one very long flight (two flights, actually). The distance between Dhanashree Date and Ayesha Mallik and the SLA [...]

Two of Brian McCann's favorite hobbies are writing fiction and running obstacle courses, both of which are solitary pursuits. But what matters most to Brian is bringing others closer to [...]

For many librarians, technology is part of the job. For Sophia Guevara, technology is the job--librarians are the keys to making it work. Sophia got interested in technology while earning [...]

SHE'S JUMPED FROM THE PUBLIC TO THE CORPORATE TO THE ACADEMIC SECTORS DURING HER CAREER. WHAT KEEPS HER GROUNDED? HER SLA NETWORK. To appreciate the wide range of environments in [...]

It's said that good things come to those who wait. A very good thing--a challenging, permanent, full-time job--finally came to Abby Thorne nearly a decade after she received her library [...]

Beth Greenfield had always wanted to be a lawyer, so a couple of years after graduating from college. she applied to law school. And although she worked only briefly as [...]

Many organizations have eliminated their physical libraries and information centers in recent years, and some have done the same to their switchboards and call centers. Lois Ireland is the rare [...]

Some people take along books when they go to the beach. Michelle Bond wants to put an entire library next to a beach--in Australia, no less--and work there. Prior to [...]

One lives and works on the East Coast, the other on the West Coast. One began her career as a travel agent, while the other had dreams of becoming the [...]

For someone who decided to become a librarian on a whim, Denise Chochrek sure behaves as though it was her life's calling. With her day job as senior knowledge analyst [...]

Research /re serCH/the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions Search /serCH/to try to find something by looking or [...]

AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES KANE Note: this interview was originally published in the March 2011 issue of information Outlook. Conventional wisdom holds that it costs much less money to retain [...]

The word hack has been put to many uses during Its lifetime, almost all of them negative. Think of hack writers, hack comedians, and golfers and baseball players hacking at [...]

The SLA Annual Conference & INFOEXPO is SLA's highest-rated product or service--more than three-quarters of respondents to this year's member survey said they find it 'useful' or 'very useful.' SLA [...]

Roots are important to Lora Bray, in several senses of the word. Raised on a farm in central Wisconsin, she still visits a farm to shop for vegetables for her [...]

SHE'S WORKED WITH INFORMATION AS A SELLER, A CONSUMER, A STUDENT, AND A TEACHER, BUT AT HEART SHE'S A LIBRARIAN WHO'S ALWAYS OPEN TO OPPORTUNITIES. For all the concern about [...]

There's something about libraries that brings out the best in Alex Grigg. As a child, he won awards for reading more library books than any other student in his class. [...]

At home he's an artist, at work he's a search optimization manager, and in between--well, in between there's a flagpole. During his commute to work at price water house Coopers [...]

Follow Ned Potter around York, England, where he lives and works, and you get the sense that he's not in any particular hurry. He walks everywhere, not by design but [...]

Dee Baldwin earned a master's degree in Spanish, then took a library job years later in a French-speaking country. When she started her career in the information profession, her long-term [...]

In a world of constant innovation--iPhones and tablets, pilotless aircraft and robots that vacuum floors, 24/7 connectivity and cars that park themselves--the past still exerts a powerful hold on our [...]

For most people, the path to professional success and recognition follows a tried-and-true formula. Start at the bottom rung and gradually work your way up the corporate ladder. In mid-career, [...]

Books, journals and other media are the lifeblood of libraries and information centers, and many librarians have their hands full organizing their collections of these resources and making them available [...]

In real estate, it's often said that the three most important factors are location, location and location. But at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), whose one million-plus members buy [...]

At its December 2010 meeting, the SLA Board of Directors approved a set of ethics guidelines for a two-year trial period, after which time they will be reviewed to determine [...]

At its December 2010 meeting, the SLA Board of Directors approved a petition to form a User Experience (UX) Caucus. The study of user experience examines the ways library users [...]

Conventional wisdom holds that it costs much less money to retain an existing customer or member than to acquire a new one. But if money isn't the issue, why are [...]

Libraries generally aren't viewed as economic engines, but as the economic recession deepened during 2009 and 2010, many libraries became de facto employment centers. Job seekers crowded into public libraries [...]

To the list of the many ways that special librarians and information professionals benefit their organizations--helping them make better decisions, improve their productivity, and so on--we can now add reducing [...]

More than 40 million people are expected to travel globally on U.S. airlines during the winter holidays, and for many of them, the experience will be stressful at best. Long [...]

Providing better (and better access to) information can do almost as much to improve public health as investing in medical technology. But what happens when information is brought to bear [...]

As the 2010s turn the corner to the 2020s, it is tempting to look back at what transpired over the past decade and speculate on what might happen during the [...]

In their 1890 article 'The Right to Privacy' in the Harvard Law Review, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and co-author Samuel Warren argued for an expansion of the [...]

Where do people expect to find a library's e-books, and how can librarians make sure these expectations are met? Traditionally, people have looked for books in the library's catalog, so [...]

There's never been a better time to learn. From massive open online courses (MOOCs) to online degree programs to adult enrichment classes to employer-based training and credentialing programs, the opportunities [...]

When Billy Cook has questions about librarianship, he often turns to Rebecca Vargha, a past president of SLA and his mentor and former instructor at the School of Information and [...]

When the closing bell rang on the New York Stock Exchange on 10 August 2011, an unfamiliar name stood atop the list of the world's most valuable companies Apple. The [...]

Sessions at SLA Annual Conferences address a wide variety of topics, and SLA 2011 was no exception. From 'Data Mining and Visualization' to 'Ontologies and the Semantic Web' to 'Design [...]

Nicholas Carr surged to prominence earlier this decade with the publication of his controversial and celebrated Harvard Business Review article, 'IT Doesn't Matter,' and his follow-up book, Does IT Matter? [...]

Conference. It's a word that can conjure up thoughts of soulless convention centers, endless PowerPoint presentations, receptions at sterile hotel bars, and mindless exchanges of business cards. In recent years, [...]

As hoaxes go, the Cardiff Giant was huge. About 10 feet tall, made of stone, it was unearthed in October 1869 by workers digging a well behind a barn in [...]

Type 'love-hate relationship with technology' into Google, and more than 80 million results will appear. But change technology to IT Department, and the number of results will balloon to more [...]