NASIG Newsletter

[Ed. note: Highlights from the fall committee report to the Executive Board.]

LIBRARY SCHOOL OUTREACH COMMITTEE
Sarah Sutton, Chair

Several committee members have elected to continue their “ambassadorships” to the library schools they began working with in 2006-07. They are:

University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science – Steve Oberg
School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University – Steve Oberg
Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science – Steve Oberg
Louisiana State University School of Library and Information Science – Linda Smith Griffin

Library schools with which we had relationships in 2006-07 but for which we need to recruit new Ambassadors are:

Texas Woman’s University School of Library and Information Studies
University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science
School of Information, University of Texas
University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science
San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science

The committee has developed a draft set of guidelines for ambassadors (copy attached for board comment). Once these are finalized based on the board’s comments, we will recruit ambassadors for these school. We plan to accomplish this by November 1, when the 2008 award applications are posted to the NASIG website.

The primary criteria for ambassador selection this year are (1) a connection or affiliation with the library school (e.g., NASIG Student Award recipients who are enrolled at the school or are recent graduates still in contact with the school, geographic proximity, and/or NASIG members who are alumni of the school) and (2) willingness and enthusiasm to connect or reconnect with the school in order to promote NASIG..

Steve Oberg consulted with Abigail Bordeaux of ECC and recommended to the committee that we use a Google group for file sharing. He subsequently created the group and all committee members have joined the group.

The committee has been discussing other uses for the group space including using the wiki feature to create information pages for each school to which an ambassador is assigned. Information stored on these pages would include address, phone, email for the school itself, possible contacts, previous award winner from the school, and alumni who are active NASIG members. We also see the potential for using these pages as a place where Ambassadors can document the contact/involvement with their schools. We don’t expect that the learning curve for this technology will present a barrier to recruitment. Electronic communication technology is ubiquitous in most librarians’ daily work. The committee has had success using Google Groups. Helping ambassadors to learn to use it would be one of the functions Committee members would serve in their roles as Ambassador liaisons.