PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
The Annual Meeting is just around the corner and it’s time to
pass the gavel – time flies when you’re having fun! As several
Past Presidents have noted, "All the fame and notoriety of
being President is not as overwhelming as one would imagine."
The job was much easier due to a great executive board, committee
chairs and members.
As I join the archive of Past Presidents, I would like to
acknowledge and extend my appreciation to Vice-President Chris Roy,
Treasurer Theresa Baylock, Secretary Susan Scoville, Immediate Past
President Jeff Dowd, Members at Large Caroline Benoit and Sandi
Phillips, and Nominating Committee Members Cathy Capuano and Susan
Davis. The Committee Chairs Larry Cheeseman, Claudia Jalowka, Dottie
McCaughtry, Steve Mirsky, Sandee Molden, Mary Scott, Mary Tartaglia,
and Janet Zigadto have all done a superb job. Thank you also to
everyone at Quinnipiac for providing a perfect facility for several
of our programs.
I have had a wonderful time and gained a lot from serving in this
position due to the support and wisdom of experienced members and
the enthusiasm and vitality of new members. I hope you have also
gained something beneficial from a program or meeting during the
past year – from practical suggestions on improving your
professional situation to the intangible benefits of making new
contacts and friends.
And while we have accomplished a lot this year, we can never get
to everything that we wanted to do. Now is the time to think about
the kind of organization we want SNELLA to be and volunteer to make
it happen. Although we are all busy, we can all find the time to
help out in some way. I know we will all support our incoming
President, Chris Roy, and the new Board. The Nominating Committee
has provided the membership with an outstanding slate of officers
for 2002-2003.
A MESSAGE FROM THE INCOMING PRESIDENT
My name is Chris Roy. And I’ll be serving as president in June.
I've been a law librarian for two years. Over that time I’ve had
the pleasure of meeting many SNELLA members. In the next year, I
hope to meet many more of you. For those of you who don't know me, I
was a news librarian for two years at the Hartford Courant
before starting at the Law Library at Rockville. I graduated from
SCSU with my MLS in 1998. I earned an English degree from UConn
before attending Southern. My wife and I enjoy traveling and have
visited six countries and Las Vegas (a city filled with facsimiles
of other country’s cities) in the past two years. I don't have a
theme for the coming year. If I did I'd probably change it halfway
through my tenure. One goal is to continue with the SNELLA tradition
of offering stimulating educational programs and fun social
activities. I encourage anyone with ideas or suggestions to please
contact me. I must add that Linda Mellick did an amazing job as
president. She was dedicated and resourceful, and I plan to match
her sincere commitment to SNELLA. It will be hard to follow her, but
also a welcome challenge. Thanks Linda. And I hope to see you all at
the annual dinner in June.
MEMBER NEWS
Phyllis Leonardi, PhD, currently a law librarian at Tyler Cooper
& Alcorn and formerly at Eastern Connecticut State University,
was a co-presenter of a paper at the February 2002 Learning
Disabilities Association of America's International Conference in
Denver, CO on information literacy: "Simultaneous Processing
Skills and the Effective Use of Electronic Databases." Her
conference presentation was on information literacy, specifically
electronic database searching, and methods of teaching this skill to
learning disabled academic students, specifically those with
simultaneous processing skills. Her co-presenter was P. A. Pezzullo,
PhD., Director of Special Services in the Narragansett RI Education
Department.
Phyllis’s part of the presentation used recent research from
the journals College and Research Libraries and College and Research
Library News. The title was "They Don't Know What They Don't
Know," based on studies done at Johns Hopkins University, UCLA
Berkeley and Eastern Connecticut State University with juniors and
seniors majoring in Political Science, a subject that requires many
research papers. Studies showed that most students assume they know
everything they need to know about library research, but tests on
actual knowledge prove their assumptions wrong. For example,
approximately 75-90% of students assume they know how to find
materials in a library, but test results show that only 40% can
actually find the materials.
She made suggestions on methods librarians can use to teach
information literacy to improve such findings. Her colleague then
presented the problems for learning disabled students and suggested
methods to teach these students to do research using electronic
databases. Most of these require a one-on-one session with a trained
reference librarian and a great deal of time, as well as completely
different ways of teaching.
There was good discussion afterwards, since they had a diverse
group of teachers, administrators and parents of learning disabled
students.
SPRING LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
This program provided an enjoyable opportunity for professional
development. Thanks to Claudia Jalowka for arranging everything and
thanks to Janet Zigadto for providing a program synopsis.
Our spring workshop, "Leadership: What Lies Within,"
was held on Friday, March 22nd from 9 am to 1 pm at the Quinnipiac
University Law School Library. Approximately 38 people attended.
Gail Warren of the Virginia State Law Library was the presenter. She
was highly recommended by two Connecticut Judicial Branch Law
Library staff members who first saw her presentation at a court law
libraries management seminar last year.
Gail started off with some written exercises used to convey some
very positive "basic truths." She had us write down our
thoughts to questions such as "what services, programs or
processes might not exist or run as smoothly had you never worked in
your present organization?" and "what is one thing you
might do that would have a significant impact on the
library/organization where you work?" She also had us rate our
importance to our library on a scale from one to five, five
representing crucial importance and one representing no importance
at all. After sharing some of our responses, Gail concluded the
exercise by stressing that each one of us makes a valuable
contribution to our workplaces, each person has the capacity to
significantly impact our colleagues and workplaces, and that each
person determines the quality of that impact.
She then discussed the topic of leadership. Some definitions of
leadership include "one that takes the lead or initiative"
and "a person in whom resides authority or ruling power."
However, Gail's favorite definition of leadership is "the act
of influencing another person." The various types of leadership
include the classic visionary (our typical image of a leader), the
living example (someone who "walks the walk"), the
customer advocate and the barrier buster. Gail argued that there is
a place for all types of leadership and that a leader is made, not
born.
She also had some helpful handouts entitled "Recommended
Reading for Library Leaders" and "Leadership Links"
which is a list of websites concerning leadership issues.
LEGAL RESEARCH COURSE
Once again the legal research course was a great success.
Everyone attending felt it was a day well spent. In addition to
offering an introduction to Legal Research, it is a source of income
that helps fund other SNELLA activities. Thanks to Claudia Jalowka,
Cathy Capuano and Larry Cheeseman for their expertise and
willingness to devote much time and effort to this program.
BOOTH AT CLA
The new SNELLA Banner made its debut at the SNELLA booth at
Connecticut Library Association Conference in April. It looked
great! And thanks to Susan Scoville, Phyllis Leonardi, Claudia
Jalowka, Jeff Dowd, Sandi Phillips and Dottie McCaughtry for
"manning" the booth.
WEB SITE
We all cringe when we hear that "everything is on the
web". However, that is becoming a reality for SNELLA
information. Watch for the debut of our new web site. Thanks to the
Susan Scoville and Mary Scott for getting this underway and to Pepe
& Hazard for hosting the site.
SCHOLARSHIP
Congratulations to scholarship recipients Caroline Benoit and
Janet Zigadto. Caroline recently attended National Online in New
York and Janet will be attending AALL in Orlando. We look forward to
their reviews of these conferences in a future newsletter.
ANNUAL DINNER
SNELLA ANNUAL MEETING AND DINNER
Tuesday, June 18th
SAGE AMERICAN GRILL
on the water
100 South Water St., New Haven
203-787-3466
Cash Bar 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Vegetable Crudites served with Ranch and Bleu
Cheese Dip
Dinner 7:00 p.m.
Fresh Baked Sage Bread
Mixed Field Green Salad served with Sage’s
Orange Balsamic Vinaigrette
Choice of Entrée
Peppered Filet Mignon served with Caramelized Onions and Brandy
Sauce
Grilled Santa Fe Chicken Breast
Baked Stuffed Shrimp with a Savory Crab Meat Stuffing
Baked Idaho Potato served with Butter and Sour
Cream
Chef’s selection of Fresh Vegetables
Choice of Dessert
Sage’s Mood Pie-layers of Peanut Butter and Butterfinger
Crunch Ice Cream in Oreo Cookie Crust topped with Fudge, Belgian
Chocolate Sauce, Whipped Cream, Nuts
Warm Cinnamon Apple Crisp topped with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Coffee – Tea
Please return the form below with your dinner choices and a check
made out to SNELLA to: Linda Mellick, 28 Valley View Rd., Newtown,
CT 06470 by June 12, 2002.
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SNELLA DINNER
_____ Filet Mignon $35.00
_____ Chicken $25.00
_____ Shrimp $30.00
For Dessert: _____ Mood Pie _____ Apple Crisp
Name __________________________________________________________
Address ________________________________________________________
Phone No. ( )
____________________________
Email address _____________ @ ___________________________