Two U.S. federal libraries and two federal librarians will be recognized by the Library of Congress Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) in a ceremony next week. The honorees were announced in a May 15 press release.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Research Library is singled out for its “leadership role in initiating new data services (including sophisticated data-discovery tools) and its rapidly growing data-reference service.”

The RAF Alconbury Base Library, 423d Force Support Squadron, U.S. Air Force, Huntingdon, England, is recognized for outstanding service in support of the base’s 38 education degrees offered by five accredited schools.

Joyce C. Greene, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, is FEDLINK’s 2012 Federal Librarian of the Year. Among her leadership achievements, Joyce “championed the development of a new Content Management Office, which has increased the center’s momentum toward organizational change, and developed a digital library and repository with six unique collections.”

Tiffany Hughey, U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern Library, Landstuhl, Germany, is the 2012 Federal Library Technician of the Year. She “has seamlessly combined her professional technician skills with a thorough knowledge of Army policies and procedures, allowing her to improve programming and services in the garrison and in Army Europe Libraries.”

Congratulations to the award winnners! Your accomplishments demonstrate the great variety of  service and innovation happening in federal libraries.

It’s exciting to see DGI member Naomi House featured in the Library Journal, in the 22 February article Nine Questions with Naomi House, founder of I Need A Library Job.

I Need A Library Job (INALJ.com) is a mega-site for library and archives job postings and resources in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. The site grew out of Naomi’s own job-hunting experience and is now her hobby and passion:

My hope was to help at least one person find a job and now we are nearing 800 success stories and those are just the people who shared their success with me. There are many more.

Naomi started out solo and now has 150 volunteers helping. Some other figures:

 I had 3,700 [subscribers] to the daily email which transitioned to the INALJ Jobs pages in 2013. I have nearly 800 subscribers to the blog, and I will reach 1 million page views in the next month or two. In 2012 fans from 151 countries visited INALJ.com.

But this is just what she does in her spare time. Naomi has a full-time day job as a federal librarian, a job she found on a listserv.

Marie Kaddell of LexisNexis has just released Best Practices for Government Libraries 2012: Pushing Boundaries:  Mobility, Community, Accessibility [PDF]. Marie, 2012 Past Chair of SLA/DGI, edits the annual compilation of content submitted by government librarians and community leaders with an interest in government libraries. On her Government Info Pro blog, Marie reports “the 2012 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 75 contributors including librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.”

Contributions cover benchmarking, career planning, international work, open government, public libraries, public records, records management, and social media.

Articles and guides contributed by DGI members include:

• Pushing Boundaries: From Collections to Service, by James King, Information Architect, National Institutes of Health Library
• An Online Community Is Born: NIC’s National Jail Exchange, by Connie Clem, Managing Editor, National Jail Exchange, Principal, Clem Information Strategies
• Gaining Management Skills through Professional Association Leadership, by Kim Schultz, Marketing Research Analyst, Affinion Loyalty Group
• Reaching Out to Tribal College and University Libraries: A Project to
  Provide Interior Library Resources and Services, by George Franchois, Director, U.S. Department of the Interior Library
• Planning for the Worst: Disaster Preparedness and Response in Federal Libraries, by Aileen M. J. Marshall, MA, MLIS, Reference Librarian at the U.S. Department of Transportation

An e-book edition of Best Practices is in the works.

The Library Journal recently featured an article on the NewFeds, a group of librarians and information science professionals beginning federal government careers. LJ’s 8 August 2012 article New Feds Working Group Supports Librarians in Government describes the group:

New Feds has more than 100 members across the United States and some international members as well, including some at military bases, [co-founder Jessica] Hernandez said. The organization is a working group of FEDLINK, the Federal Library and Information Network, which is a part of the U.S. Library of Congress. …

Blane Dessy, the New Feds mentor and executive director of FEDLINK, has been providing strategic support to New Feds, and called it an “amazing group.” He said he has been impressed by the ways they use new technology, the creative approaches they bring to their work, and the new perspective they bring to federal libraries. “It’s so exciting to see that much talent and enthusiasm in this group of young librarians,” he said. “That is very infectious, so they are a good role model for others in our organization.”

Congrats to NewFeds and co-founders Aimee Babcock-Ellis and Jessica Hernandez on the coverage! DGI was fortunate to have NewFeds Leia Dickerson and Tanya Whippie speak at the division’s annual meeting at SLA Chicago this year.

Follow NewFeds at http://newfedsinfo.wordpress.com/ .

NewFeds: You’re all invited to expand your networking world with the SLA Government Information Division. Join us!

[Today's blog post was written and submitted by our DGI student contest winner, Lisa Foster. Thank you, Lisa, and congratulations!]

As a citizen and a library student, I believe wholeheartedly in the right of citizens to access government information. As a local government lawyer, I am often confronted with balancing the right of citizens to access information, and the right of government agencies to withhold information for legitimate reasons. Finding the right balance of disclosure and nondisclosure is sometimes a difficult judgment call, but in most cases, the best practice for government agencies is to err on the side of disclosure. The federal Freedom of Information Act, and the state statutes that are modeled after the FOIA, all provide guidance about how to strike this balance. The FOIA provides:

“Except as otherwise required by statute, matters of official record shall be made available, in accordance with published rule, to persons properly and directly concerned, except information held confidential for good cause found.”
5 U.S.C. §552(d).

This raises the issue of when there is “good cause” to withhold records. While advocates for access to information may believe that there is rarely a justification to fully or partially withhold records, I have seen many instances where doing so serves an important interest. For instance, library circulation records are exempt from disclosure in California. This is an important exception that allows citizens the intellectual freedom to access library materials without fear of having their circulation records reviewed by others, such as law enforcement agencies. Likewise, when citizens send correspondence to government agencies, they should not have to worry about their personal contact information, such as their email address or home phone number, being disclosed to the media. The best way to balance the interest in transparency and the interest in personal privacy in this situation is to provide copies of the requested correspondence to the requesting party with the citizen’s contact information redacted.

Being an aspiring librarian and a practicing government lawyer gives me a unique perspective on the subject of government document disclosure, and hopefully, an ability to see both sides when confronted with a disclosure issue. I believe that this balanced perspective is something that will serve me in my future career as an information professional.

Respectfully submitted,

Lisa A. Foster

This week, SLA’s FutureReady365 blog features posts from librarians who work with government information or for government institutions.

So far this week:

Marie Kaddell, current chair of DGI, blogs about her experience editing Best Practices for Government Libraries, a “collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government libraries and includes content submitted by government librarians and community leaders with an interest in government libraries and government information.”

George Franchois, who has been a program planner extraordinaire for DGI, blogs about Utilizing Electronic Databases During a Library Relocation.

The post from James King, DGI member and SLA Fellow, covers research metrics and the role they can plan in showing the value of our research services.

Each of the posts was published previously as part of the Best Practices for Government Libraries [PDF] document Marie describes.

Congratulations to librarian Robbie LaFleur, director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. Robbie was recognized by the National Conference of State Legislatures with a 2011 Legislative Staff Achievement Award. The awards were announced at the recent NCSL annual conference and described in NCSL’s 11 August press release.

The U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services has recently posted a compilation of Advisory Panel white papers on the “Future of Librarians in the Workforce.”   The document has just been published and is available at http://imlsworkforce.org/ or directly at mingus.exp.sis.pitt.edu:8888/workforce/IMLS_Opinion_Papers.pdf.

Julie Stich, a member of the Business Libraries panel from the SLA Wisconsin Chapter, has written an excellent overview, available on the chapter website, http://www.sla.org/chapter/cwi/feature.htm.

Government Information Division member Gloria Zamora contributed to the writing of the “State and Federal Libraries” section which starts on page 151.