Librarians Making a Difference - Part 1

The following are some of the librarians and information professionals who are making a significant impact on the field of librarianship today. All are well-known for their creative vision, technological innovations, and significant contributions to the information field in areas such as the Internet, reference work, research, and online searching. In no way is this list meant to be exhaustive – these are just some of the individuals I feel are making a real and important difference in the field of librarianship.

Marylaine Block – “Librarian Without Walls” Marylaine Block is a prolific writer, Internet trainer, Web master, and book lover. She is well-known for creating the inimitable Best Information on the Net (BIOTN) http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/ , and her weekly ezine for librarians and information junkies Ex Libris http://marylaine.com/exlibris/index.html . We also have Marylaine to thank for Book Bytes http://marylaine.com/bookbyte/index.html , an excellent tool for book-lovers and librarians which contains book reviews, annotated reading lists, and links to all kinds of bookish information. And of course there's her self-explanatory Web guide Neat New Stuff I Found This Week http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html .

Steve Coffman - Former director of FYI, the Los Angeles Public Library’s fee-based business information service, Steve Coffman is nothing if not controversial. Even Marylaine (above) wrote a column about him! http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib38.html . Steve is perhaps best known in the library world for his provocative article comparing libraries with book stores in Building Earth’s Largest Library: Driving into the Future http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar99/... , and suggesting we model reference services after commercial customer call centers in Reference as Others Do It (American Libraries, May 1999). He now works for LSSI http://www.lssi.com/ , is a frequent speaker at conferences on the subject of virtual reference and is involved in a number of digital reference projects, and also writes the “Library Sector” column for Information Broker magazine.

Barbara Quint – Online searching guru and renowned expert Barbara Quint writes the always superb Quint’s Online column for Information Today magazine http://www.infotoday.com/it/itnew.htm , is the editor of Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/defaul... , and is a regular speaker at many major library conferences and events. She started out as a librarian in the Rand Corporation library, where she worked for nearly twenty years, and in 1976 she developed SCOUG (Southern California Online Users Group) http://www.scougweb.org/ . Her articles never fail to be insightful and helpful, even to the most experienced online searcher.

Chris Sherman - Chris Sherman is the Web Search Guide at About.com http://websearch.about.com/internet/webs... and has without a doubt come to be considered an expert in the Web searching field. While not technically a librarian, he is a self-proclaimed "MLIS in a previous life" (Ex Libris Guru Interview http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib41.html ) and I'm listing him here because of his great contributions to the body of knowledge on Web searching. His regular feature articles and insights on searching the Web, interest in information organization, classification, and retrieval, and analysis of new search technologies have become a staple in the online field. Chris is also the President of Searchwise http://www.searchwise.net/ , a Web consulting firm in Los Angeles, California.

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