MLS Students and iSchool Faculty Awarded at SLA Conference (College Park, MD, 6/29/09)

Maryland's iSchool is pleased to announce the award of its students and faculty at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) 2009 Annual Conference in Washington DC.

Master of Library Science students Arlene Fletcher, Mary Franklin, Joyce Garczynski, Glynnis Gilbert, and Sara Mathis, and Assistant Professor Ping Wang have won the Contributed Paper Award for their paper "Saving Special Libraries in a Recession: Business Strategies for Survival and Success."  The paper addresses the common challenges faced by special libraries in difficult economic times. 

The student-faculty team surveyed 113 special librarians in the greater Washington DC area and asked them to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies for preventing cutbacks in various types of special libraries.  In addition, the team conducted intensive case studies of the successful and failed efforts to meet budgetary challenges in four special libraries.  Based on the findings from their survey and case studies, the authors urge special librarian to be proactive in order for their libraries to weather today's economic recession and thrive in the long run.  They further suggest that special librarians know the specific needs of other members of their organizations, align library services with organizational goals, and aggressively market the libraries to the management of their organizations with compelling metrics.

This study originated from a team project in the course "Management and Administration for the Information Professional," a required course that Dr. Wang regularly teaches in the Master of Library Science program.  Earlier this year, the proposal of the study was accepted for presentation at this year's SLA annual conference after a blind peer-review process.  More recently SLA's Contributed Papers Selection Committee has selected this paper from the accepted papers as the one that best represents the conference's theme:  Information to Inspiration: Knowledge and Vision Shaping the Future.

For more information about SLA, please visit http://www.sla.org/.