On March 19, ALA will hold elections for next year’s board members. Below you will find the names of our nominees, the positions they are running for, and a brief bio that will allow you to learn more about candidates. In the coming weeks we will also be posting candidate videos on the NMRT YouTube Channel, as well as hosting a live chat session. More information on these events will follow.
The NMRT Nominating Committee is pleased to present to you our nominees for the election:
Vice-President/President-Elect:
Emily Prather-Rodgers
I graduated from the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science in December 2005. After working as a cataloger at a public university in Georgia for several years, I moved to suburban Chicago to take the position of Technical Services Coordinator at North Central College, a private liberal arts college. I’ve been a member of ALA and NMRT since 2005. I have served on NMRT committees since 2007, and I’m currently serving as the chair of the Annual Conference Professional Development Attendance Award Committee (formerly the Marshall Cavendish Award Committee). I am also a member of the ALCTS/CMDS Publications Committee. My local committee work includes the I- Share Cataloging and Authority Control Team for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois and the LIBRAS Collection Management Special Interest Group.
I originally joined NMRT because of what I wanted the organization to do for me. Over the past several years, however, I have enjoyed having the opportunity to discover what I can do for the organization and for the new members who join each year. I am running for the position of Vice President/President-Elect so that I can play a bigger part in the continued work of the organization to achieve its mission of helping other librarians to become more actively involved in both ALA and the profession at large.
Secretary:
Jessica Pryde
Jessica Pryde has been the Librarian and Media Specialist at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, DC since August of 2010, after earning her MLIS in December 2009 from San Jose State University. As the sole librarian, she conducts all collection development, instruction, and library functions. She is currently an Intern for the ALA Committee on Education and a member of the AASL Publications Advisory Group. She also writes for YALSA’s literature blog, The Hub, and acts as the NMRT Liaison to AASL.
Easter DiGangi
Easter DiGangi is originally from Southwestern Ohio. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Major in Political Science with a Minor in Chemistry). Easter earned her MLS at Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison in December of 2010. She has over five year’s experience combined working in academic (3 years) and public libraries (4 years). Easter was honored with membership in Beta Phi Mu and the 2011 ALA Class of Emerging Leaders. She is currently working at Demco.
In Easter’s spare time, she enjoys genealogy, scrapbooking, collecting bookmarks, knitting, and enjoying nature.
Asst. Treasurer/Treasurer:
Jonathan Lu
Jonathan Lu graduated from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Science with a MLIS in 2005. He has also received his B.S. in International Affairs from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. Jonathan is currently the Adult Services Librarian at the Bartow County Library in Cartersville, GA. He previously worked at Kennesaw State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Erie County Library. Prior to coming to the library world, Jonathan worked for the Canadian Government as an International Marketing Coordinator at the Canadian Consulate in Atlanta.
For fun, Jonathan is the Video Game Director for the Bartow County Library System which hosts 3 tournaments with prizes per year. Also he is Director and MC of Animecon, a library anime festival.
Jonathan is currently a member of ALA, PLA, NMRT, and GLA. Jonathan was the only Georgia representative at American Library Association Emerging Leader Class 2011 where he served on team G, Video Game Collection Development. He has also served on the GOLD/GALILEO User Advisory Committee 2010 (Small/Med Libraries) and Bartow County Library Goodwill Committee (2007).
Networking Director:
Barbara Lewis
Barbara received her B.S. in Industrial Engineering from General Motors Institute and her M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida. After working 25 years as an Industrial Engineer and Information Systems Analyst for companies such as General Motors, Corning, and Nortel Networks, she began her graduate studies in academic librarianship. Barbara worked as a graduate assistant at the USF Tampa Library, gaining practical experience in her new career field. She joined the USF faculty as Outreach Librarian for the Tampa Library in 2005. In her current position of Coordinator for Digital Collections, Barbara is responsible for project management and scheduling of the Library’s Digital Collections and Services group. Her goals include improving the productivity and capacity of digitization operations and enhancing the visibility and accessibility of digital collections. Her research interests include information seeking behavior and collection assessment and she hopes to soon begin graduate studies in Cultural Anthropology.
Outreach Director:
Bohyun Kim
Bohyun Kim is the Digital Access Librarian at Florida International University Medical Library in Miami, FL. As a new librarian, she attended her first ALA conference in 2009. And since then, she has been a member of NMRT and had great interests in the challenges that new librarians encounter when they go through the transition from a library assistant/LIS student to a librarian.
She interviewed a few successful new librarians in her blog, Library Hat (http://www.bohyunkim.net/blog/archives/tag/interview-with-brand-new-librarians), and started the New and Veteran Librarian Tweet-up at the ALA Midwinter in 2010, which is a great place for new librarians to meet one another and is being still continued at every ALA Annual and Midwinter. She has also served for the NMRT Annual Programming committee (2010-2011) and put together the first NMRT video contest to provide tips and advice for new librarians who cannot attend the ALA conference in person.
As the NMRT Outreach director, she hopes to meet more new librarians and to help them to connect and learn about many networking and career development opportunities and resources available at NMRt and ALA. She can be easily found at Twitter (http://twitter.com/bohyunkim) and welcomes all conversations and ideas about new librarians and librarianship.
Thank you,
NMRT Nominating Committee