O. Contribute to Well-Being of Communities

Introduction to Core Competency O. Contribute to the cultural, economic, educational and social well-being of our communities.

I think contribute is the operative word here. My goal at library school has always been to make a contribution to the department, to the school, to the profession, to the world. I started demonstrating this in my first semester by applying for awards, fellowships, and scholarships that by winning have brought reward and recognition not only to me personally and professionally, but also to SLIS, SJSU. This went on for three years the climax of which was probably 2005 when I won awards that sent me to both the SLA and the ALA Annual Conferences in June and that enabled me to publish two articles. At one point I was named a SJSU Student Star and was featured on an SJSU Web site that is now gone. I have also been featured on the SLIS Meet Spotlight several times. I have been invited to enter my biography in Marquis Who's Who in America, which also brings recognition to me personally and professionally, and to SLIS, SJSU. Rather than broadcast my successes to get attention, I believe that making my experience public motivates others to achieve that they see another SLIS student achieving. I can verify this by an email message from Leslie Wolf, SLIS student: "I have been following your SLIS "career" with great interest – you are an inspiring leader for those of us in the program! And after reading about how much money you have been awarded in stipends, scholarships and honors, I applied for a stipend from SLA's Business & Finance Division to attend the 2007 SLA conference. I just found out I have been accepted" (personal communication, April 6, 2007).

Another way that I found possible to contribute to SLIS and to the profession is through activity in ALASC. Being the ALASC chairperson has been the most worthwhile experience so far this year. I have discovered an interest in leadership that I didn't know I had and have developed skills in motivating others to higher levels of achievement. I have been completely impressed at the ability and enthusiasm of my co-ALASC officers. We have given much thought, and have contributed our time and energy, to developing a sense of community amongst our diverse and distant SLIS student population.

Our applications for the SJSU Associated Students Awards, the Most Outstanding Professional/Academic Organization and the Outstanding Educational Program, and the Student Organization of the Year, best explain how ALASC has contributed to our members, to SLIS and SJSU, to our community, and beyond. Our submission to the CASA Diversity Award, which for the first time was open to student organizations, provides a brief summary our activities this year:

ALASC is a student organization that represents 2,000 SLIS students state and countrywide. We have diversified our outreach efforts by moving into Web 2.0 social software. We create Podcasts of our Luminary Lectures that users can access on iTunes, YouTube, and MySpace, the last two receiving 585 hits and 750 hits. Our Blog highlights the activities of SLIS students. We produce a bimonthly newsletter, which our editor has elevated from being a newsy letter to a serious publication providing students a start as editors and authors. Our spring lecture series hopes to feature a YA literature expert, who will discuss the theme of tolerance in a middle school literature curriculum he has developed. ALASC serves SLIS students by helping students attend library conferences. By volunteering at the Internet Librarian, the CLA and PLA conferences, SLIS students got free or lowered registration. ALASC created a team to participate in Day of Service at East Carnegie Branch Library. This year ALASC officers are located statewide, which requires social networking tools to communicate and this trend will continue. Socializing among students occurs via our policy of students planning an ALASC "Meet and Greet" in their communities using our communication tools and funds. Our fundraising grew through Amazon Affiliates Program, in which textbooks purchased earns us a percentage.

Another way that I have contributed to the LIS profession is through my work with a LIS student professional journal, Library Student Journal, where I am now a section editor. I was asked to join the editorial board in 2006 based on my having published in the LITA journal, ITAL. My work with this journal involves evaluating and editing student submissions, responding to students who submit work, interacting with other board members, discussing editorial decisions, and volunteering at the upcoming Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) Annual Meeting in San Francisco in early June 2007.

My work as an editor has motivated me to increase my efforts to advance my own career as a published writer. Recently I reworked a paper completed in 2006 and submitted it to the LITA journal, ITAL. If not accepted, I will submit it to Library Review's 80th anniversary December issue, which will feature articles by library school students. I have discovered that publishing your work is the best way to contribute to the body of knowledge of your profession. After publishing, presenting at conferences is the next best way to contribute to your profession. Because I am by nature shy, and by far a better writer than speaker, aiming for the publication, rather than the presentation, of my research works best.

Publishing ones work in an open access journal, such as ITAL, rather than a proprietary journal, such as Library Review, expands the availability of the work to those people in institutions world wide who may not have the funds to subscribe to high priced, proprietary databases. After publishing my one article in ITAL, which embargoes its contents for the first six months, I was contacted by people from all over the world asking me to send them the article. Tracking where my published work gets cited tells me that I am making a valid contribution to the field. If people are reading my article and using it in their own articles, I have contributed to the cultural, educational, and social well being of my world.

Because the foundation stone of library and information science is the freedom of information, I feel that LIS writers are obligated to make their published work available in library and information science, open archives repositories such as E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) and Digital Library of Information Science and Technology (dLIST) or publish it initially in an open access LIS journal, such as D-Lib Magazine. One of my goals this summer is to upload my Open Access article to a LIS repository.