Progressive Librarians Guild

UA Chapter -- Summer/Fall 2009 Newsletter

Volume 2, Issue 1

From the President

Kristen Curé

Thanks to our very active and creative chapter membersas well as through collaborations with others in the com-munity, Spring semester 2009 was packed with engagingand successful events:

Our rst professional development event of the semes

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ter was a town hall discussion on the Google Bookssettlement, led by SIRLS professor Peter Botticellion February 18, 2009: Googleand the Future of Libraries.As an ongoing project through

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out the semester, we have col-laborated with the Dry RiverCollective to organize and cat-alog their community resourceand zine library.PLG teamed up with LSO to

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bring the Fourth Annual SIRLSGraduate Student Symposium

the rst weekend in March.

The symposium theme—Pro-active Librarianship: Creativeand Innovative Approaches toInformation—came to life inevery aspect of the event. Stu-dents attended a dinner with the Symposium Keynotespeaker, Rory Litwin the night before the presenta-tions. The day of the symposium, funds were raisedfor library and literacy projects in Belize and the ma- jority of the student presentations covered progres-sive topics.

On March 25th, 2009, we held the Intellectual Prop

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erty Workshop for Progressive Librarians to look athow intellectual copyright laws affect many aspectsof LIS professions, including: education and schol-arly communications, information ethics and indig-

enous communities. Dan Lee, Kay Mathiesen, Atifa

Rawan and Eugenia Charles-Newton took part in thepanel and sparked an informative and dynamic dis-cussion.

On April 1, 2009, we invited Marti Lindsey to present•How to Get the Most Impact from Outreach. Her pre

-sentation focused on successful outreach approachesfor LIS professionals.Dawn Hunziker from the Disability Resource Cen-

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ter brought us the Accessibility Workshop on April13, 2009. Her very engaging and practical workshopcovered how to make web pagesand web documents more acces-sible for people with disabilities.The techniques she covered can

also benet people relying on old

computers or even people who usePDAs.We also participated in

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three social events this semester:an opening social at Hotel Con-gress in January, a joint potluckand barbeque with LSO and SLAin April, and our one year anniver-sary brunch at Lovin’ Spoonfuls in

May.

From the Editor

Welcome to our third newsletter. From events and work-shops to community projects, the past semester has beena whirlwind of activity for PLG-UA. Not only that, our

Chapter celebrated its rst anniversary.

In this issue you can read about a few of the events spon-sored by PLG-UA over the last semester: our workshopon community outreach; our townhall discussion on the

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We closed the semester with the awarding of the rst•ever Most Progressive Faculty Awards at the SIRLSGraduation Ceremony on May 15, 2009.

As with the Fall semester, the Spring semester broughtus additional new members that contributed to the va-riety of perspectives and voices that participate in our

group. Our focus on the position of Project Managers

as the event planners and community collaborators of the group has allowed us to continue to program diverse

projects and events. Anyone, whether an ofcer or not,can volunteer to be a Project Manager (or part of a Proj

ect Manager’s support team), allowing a wide number

of members to become involved and take the lead PLGevents. This system helps to make PLG-UA more di-verse by bringing more opportunities to more membersfor leadership and teamwork experiences. It also allowspeople to focus on the issues that they are most passion-ate about—if you have an idea for a project or event that

you nd compelling, you can make it a reality at PLG.

The spring and summer have also brought the gradua-

tion of two of our ofcers. Rebecca Bliquez, who servedas our very efcient secretary as well as on the sympo

-sium planning committee, graduated this year. NicolePagowsky also graduated this year. As founding Presi-dent, she not only worked to bring PLG-UA into being,but it was her vision of the group as fun; creative; andmost of all, inclusive; that has allowed us to grow andenabled the success of our many projects and events.In addition to serving as President, Nicole was also apart of the symposium planning committee and a proj-ect manager for some of our events. Thanks to both of you for your contributions and good luck in your futureendeavors!Finally, a glimpse at some of what is planned for Sum-mer and Fall 2009:In continued support of commitment to collabora-

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tion with the community at large, we are in the earlystages of working with Read Between the Bars to or-ganize and catalog their collection. As with our workwith the Dry River collective, we feel that establish-ing community connections is an essential way forus to use our LIS skills to improve our community.We are currently planning a Panel Discussion on

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Traditional Cultural Expression and how progressivelibrarians can work in culturally competent ways.Originally started as an Earth Day project, we will

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be planting a desert tree with the Sahuaro Girl ScoutCouncil on their Tucson day camp and programsite.After the success of this spring’s workshop, we have

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discussed with Dawn Hunziker the possibility of bringing us another Accessibility Workshop.We also plan to complete our initial fundraising ef-

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forts for our international library and literacy project

so that we can ship our rst collection of books to

Belize.If not already a member, we hope you will consider join-ing PLG-UA this semester. Everyone is welcome—newstudents, students who have been in the program forsome time, alumni and LIS professionals in town— andwe encourage as much participation as is comfortable

for each member. You will nd information on how to

join in this newsletter, as well as in our online wiki.Cheers!Kristen Curé / PresidentGoogle Books settlement; the Fourth Annual SIRLSGraduate Student Symposium jointly sponsored by

PLG-UA and LSO; our newly created Most Progressive

Faculty Awards; as well as an update on our ongoingBooks to Belize Project.At the core of this newsletter is an in-depth look at oneof our community outreach projects: the organizationof the small lending library at Tucson’s Dry River Col-lective.These projects are just a slice of what UA-PLG and itsmembers have been up to over the past semester. Checkout

From the President

for other events and to see whatwe have in store for the future.Best,Jez Gaddoura / Webmaster

continued rom previous page (From the President)continued rom previous page (From the Editor)

Community Outreach Workshop: How to Get the MostImpact from Outreach

Nicole Pagowsky

Progressive Librarians Guild - UA Chapter invited Marti Lindsey, Director of the Community Outreach & EducationCore (COEC) of the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center (SWEHSC), at the UA School of Pharmacy, topresent her new research on community outreach on April 1, 2009. Marti explained her Synergistic Cascading Model

of Outreach to our group, along with how to reach audiences at four levels, and how to build on past successes.

Community outreach is essential to librarianship; it helps ensure libraries remain (or become) relevant to the com

-munities they serve, helps improve equitable access, and markets the library to those who might not be using it. Pro-gressive Librarians Guild fully supports all of these objectives, and we were interested in learning how to promote

them through a better understanding of successful outreach. What is more, Marti is Director of an ofce with a focus

on environmentalism, environmental health, and educating special populations on these topics, so this event was aperfect marriage of interests.

An important point Marti makes is that outreach is not effective as one-size-ts-all, and through Marti’s SynergisticCascading Model of Outreach, Marti was able to demonstrate how there are many different angles to consider whentrying to reach individuals and groups with a message. For successful outreach, exibility is essential; understandingthe target audience and their needs (and wants), the environment and methods used to deliver the message, and howbest to measure successes means it is imperative to have a mindset of uidity. After assessment and re-assessment, it

might then necessary to adjust and re-direct energies toward more suitable approaches.

The event turnout was excellent and some great discussions were spurred through Marti’s presentation. If you

Books to Belize Project

Molly Osborn

The Books to Belize project endeavors to promote lit-eracy and library development in Central America bysending children’s books to Peace Corps Volunteersworking in Belize schools.The books have been collected, and fund-raising effortscontinue to bring us closer to our goal. We extend oursincere gratitude to the following businesses that haveassisted in our efforts.

Thank you!

The Loft CinemaBookman’sThe Espresso Art CaféRaging SageAdventure RoastersJimmy John’sBentley’s House of Coffee & TeaCafé Luce

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PLG-UA Founder and former President NicolePagowsky receiving the University of Arizona’sGraduate/Professional Leadership Award thisSpring. Congratulations!