Reception at the Library of Congress & Discounted Newseum Tour

SLA News Division conference planner Amy Disch reminded us of the reception at the Library of Congress' Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room and offered a potential discounted Newseum tour based on interest. RSVP to her by June 1.

She writes:

"The News Division’s last scheduled event during the SLA conference is a reception on Tuesday evening, June 16 in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room of the Library of Congress from 6 to 8 p.m. Our host will be Georgia Higley, Head, Newspaper Section, Serial & Government Publications Division. Many of you have sent me your RSVPs, so thank you! If you’re interested in attending and haven’t contacted me, please send a message to adisch at dispatch dot com by June 1.

I have decided to add one more item to your conference to-do list, a tour of the Newseum on the morning of Wednesday, June 17. With a group of ten or more, we can get a discounted admission rate of $16 per person.

Please let me know if you would be interested in attending the Newseum tour by June 1 and if you have any other conference questions, please let me know."

Cool Conference Programming, Early Bird Registration Ends Soon

As conference planner Amy Disch pointed out in her message to Newslib about News Division programs during the SLA Annual Conference (Lyris might require you to log in to view the message), June 13-18, 2009, there are many fabulous reasons to attend this year's event in Washington, DC. If the tour of NPR hosted by its librarians or the open house in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room at the Library of Congress don't get you excited, perhaps the continuing education course Doing More with Less might pique your interest. Learn about negotiating, time management, dealing with the census, using social networking sites for research, and the humor publication The Onion through other conference sessions. Network with colleagues. Celebrate 100 years of the association.

Take advantage of SLA's early bird discount by registering no later than Friday, April 3!

ATTN STUDENTS AND RECENT GRADS: Free Money for the SLA Annual Conference!

The News Division of the Special Libraries Association invites graduate students and December 2008 graduates interested in a career in news librarianship to apply for the Vormelker-Thomas Student Award.
The award, co-sponsored by the News Division and ProQuest, is a $1,500 stipend to assist students attending their first Special Libraries Association Annual Conference. The 2009 Annual Conference will be June 14-17, 2009 in Washington, DC.
Selection Criteria:
1. Applicants must be members of the Special Libraries Association when they apply for the stipend.
2. Applicants must be attending their first SLA conference.
3. Applicants must be graduate students or December 2008 graduates interested in a career in news librarianship.
4. Applications must include:
• a word-processed essay (500-1,000 words) addressing an issue in news librarianship
• a letter of reference from a news librarian, a news editor, or a faculty member
• a resume
• a list of course work undertaken
• a statement of professional goals
• a statement of what the applicant expects to gain from attending the conference
5. Applications must be e-mailed no later than Wednesday, March 4th at 5 p.m.

E-mail applications to:
Justin Scroggs
Phone: 239-601-9065
Email: jscroggs[at]newsbank.com

A Word document with these stipend application guidelines is available via the SLA News Division Web site.

Obituary for Liz

A nicely written obituary for Liz has been published on The Miami Herald Web site at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/obituaries/story/807999.html

Liz Donovan

Liz Donovan started this blog in May 2003. It seemed appropriate to post here the message about her death that has been shared today on NewsLib and NICAR-L from Megan Waters at The Miami Herald.

From: Waters, Megan
To: The NewsLib mailing list
Date: Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:15 AMjavascript:void(0)
Subject: [newslib] FW: Liz Donovan


All -- We're sad to report that Liz Donovan has passed away. -Megan

-----Original Message-----
From: Hirsch, Rick - Miami
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 10:06 AM
To: .MIA Newsroom
Subject: Liz Donovan

Staff:

Liz Donovan, longtime news researcher at The Miami Herald and a good friend to many in our newsroom, died at a hospital in Gainesville, Ga. Liz had been battling lung cancer.

Liz worked with Woodward and Bernstein on the Watergate story (she is thanked in the book credits) at the Washington Post before joining The Herald in 1981. Here, she assisted hundreds of reporters on projects ranging from routine to investigative, before retiring in 2004 to Murphy, N.C.

She was a pioneer in database reporting and research, and her Infomaniac Blog was one the first of its kind. On it, she explains the name:

The "Infomaniac" title comes from a 1994 article about a new kind of news researcher by John Ullman in The Database Files newsletter. They named me Infomaniac of the Year that year.

We don't have more details yet, but will share them when we do.

Rick and Anders

Rick Hirsch
Multimedia Editor
The Miami Herald
www.MiamiHerald.com

New library/research bloggers

Several have been added to the sidebar, including, today, Lu-Ann Farrar's Kentucky News Review, and Ask Us.

Catching up on the Conference

Great session today on the future of news libraries. With all the recent announcements about buyouts and layoffs, some of us expected this to be a depressing session. Conversely, I think most of left encouraged and optimistic about the future. I believe we got the full audio recorded on this session. Amy will be posting that once she has caught up on sleep.

The session this morning on "There's gold in them thar files" also received great comments. You can view Elaine Raines presentation here.

The banquet Tuesday night had great food, drinks and company. Amy Disch presented the Vormelker-Thomas Student Award to Heather Cottle of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Chris Hardesty presented the Agnes Henebry award to Leigh Poitinger. Justin Scroggs presented the other Agnes Henebry award to me and also presented the Joseph F. Kwapil Memorial Award to Ginny Everett.

This Tuesday session, Using blogs, podcasts and newsgroups for competitive intelligence research, was pretty interesting. It was a session shared with the Competitive Intelligence Division and this presentation will not be posted to the Web. May have more information later about this.

I think there will be handouts forthcoming to the Web site from the other sessions on Tuesday that were not shared with other divisions, in particular the session on Web 2.0. Lots of interesting information from this session.

Although we had a smaller crowd at the conference this year, the silent auction on Monday night was quite successful. I don't remember hearing who won the pair of underwear from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer so I'm guessing some lucky person got that in the raffle of leftover items at the banquet on Tuesday night.

Jessica had already posted on her and Derek's great session. Keep checking the news division program for presentations and handouts. Several are up on that page.

And many pictures to come!

Technology Free-for-All

The links and some notes for Technology Free-for-All with Derek Willis of The New York Times and me are on j's scratchpad and forjournalists.com.