News Library News Online
Vol. 23, No. 3/Spring 2001

Table of Contents
Regular Features

New This Month

News Library News
SLA News Division Home

 

New members introduce themselves

 

Caryn Baird
News Researcher/Librarian
St. Petersburg Times

After 10 years working as an Academic Reference Librarian, I joined the staff of the St. Petersburg Times in January of 1999. Prior to the St. Petersburg Times I worked at University of North Florida, Lake Forest College, and Loyola University Chicago. I received my M.S.-LIS from Simmons College, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Boston, Mass. in 1991. While in library school I worked full-time as the Microcomputer Intern Librarian at the Simmons Library. I graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in Philosophy and Religion in 1986. I joined SLA in order to become more involved with other librarians in News Libraries.


Mary Ellen Lambright
Media Librarian, Video Production
USAA

I am a new member to SLA and am the first librarian here at the USAA Corporate Communications department. USAA is an insurance, finance and banking association for the military community. Even though we are not a true news agency the library collection here is primarily broadcast videotapes, slides and photographs and I thought the News Division might be helpful because of common formats. Our videotape collection has about 12,000 tapes with a photo and slide collection of about 9,000 items used for employee communication, marketing, public service and education. We are setting up a digital asset management system here for the digital formats but we still have much that is not digital.

I am new to this job and coming from a medical library background, ten years with the VA Medical Center and ten years at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Since I have a lot to learn about setting up a media library, I'm looking forward to sharing with other media librarians how they manage their collections.

Last fall I sent my youngest son to college, remarried, moved to San Antonio and started this new job - all working out very well so far. I hope I'll be able to meet some of you here in San Antonio at the SLA meeting this June.


Lise Lotte Nedergaard
Information Specialist
The Danish Newsagency
Copenhagen, Denmark

I graduated as an Information Specialist in the summer of 1995 from The Royal School of Librarianship. After half a year with various jobs as a substitute I took my first full-time job in 1996 as information specialist at Odense Business College, Department of Computer Science. Until 1998 I worked on research tasks, building a web community as well as an internet portal for students, teachers and scientists. Furthermore I trained teachers and students in seeking information on the internet, and internet tools in general.

In 1998 I left the business college for Odense University Library. Here I worked in the Reference department of Humanities and Natural & Medical Sciences. But within a few months I moved on to Ritzaus Bureau - The Danish Newsagency. Today, at my Factual department, I perform research for the journalists. I maintain and develop in-house databases and an internet portal. I participate in different kinds of projects to develop company products for the web. My role in these kinds of web projects, which I find very exciting, is to be the usability consultant and manage the structure of the content. Furthermore, whenever an investigative project is organized I cooperate with the editorial teams.

Why am I in this type of business? As everybody else might recognize, I like the fact that my day is unpredictable. I never know what event or what kind of subject I have to assist on. It’s dynamic and challenging. As there’s only me in the department, I find the SLA News Division important. It's of great significance to me to keep in touch with specialists like myself and to follow the discussions, developments and ideas.


Kerry Prendergast
Manager, Information Resources
NBC Information Center

I began my career as a television researcher in the 1970's. In 1988, I received my Master's Degree in Library Science from Columbia. I was a librarian and then Assistant Library Director at the law firm of Rogers & Wells in New York. In 1991, I joined the Citibank Business Information Center as a Senior Librarian and eventually moved into the Assistant Library Manager position. In 2000, I returned to television when I joined the NBC Information Center as the Manager of Information Resources. I have been a member of SLA since 1987.