Scheeder Named to SLA Hall of Fame
Donna Scheeder, deputy chief information officer with the Library’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), has been named to the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Hall of Fame in honor of her pioneering work in the field of news librarianship and her prolonged and distinguished history of service and leadership to SLA.
Hall of Fame recognition is reserved for SLA members at or near the end of their active professional careers to recognize service and contributions to the association. Scheeder, a member of SLA since 1978 and its president in 2000–2001, recently returned to CRS to serve as its first-ever deputy chief information officer. She previously served as the director of law library services in the Law Library, where she provided management and oversight for the provision of a wide range of information and collection services for Congress, the courts, federal agencies and the public. Scheeder instituted a number of new programs in the Law Library, including the digital reference “Ask a Librarian” service. Before that, she served for 30 years in CRS in increasingly responsible positions, ultimately serving there as deputy assistant director of the Information Research Division.
Scheeder has been a consultant to parliamentary research libraries and organizations and has traveled to Japan, Brazil, Australia and Canada to give keynote addresses, lectures and workshops. She is currently a member of the governing board of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). Scheeder previously served IFLA as the vice chair of the Professional Committee (2005–2007), and on the IFLA Standing Committee on Parliamentary Libraries and Research Organizations (1997 to 2009). She has presented at the Computers in Libraries, Internet Librarian, Internet Librarian International, On-Line and KM-World conferences.
Scheeder has worked hard on behalf of SLA and continues to serve the association with distinction. In addition to her term as president, she served for three years on the board of directors as treasurer and was chair of its Finance Committee. She has also been a member of the Strategic Planning and Office Operations committees. She has also chaired several SLA divisions, including the News Division and the Leadership and Management Division, where she served as government-relations chair.
For the Washington, D.C., chapter, she has served as chair of the Government Relations Committee, chair of the Hospitality Committee and chair of the Scholarship Benefit Committee, as well as on the chapter’s board of directors as recording secretary and as president.
Her contributions over the course of her career have earned her recognition as an SLA Fellow and as recipient of the John Cotton Dana Award, SLA’s highest honor. She has also received the Ralph Shoemaker Award and the Agnes Henebry Roll of Honor from the News Division and the Board of Directors Award from the D.C. chapter.
The Special Libraries Association (SLA) is a nonprofit global organization for innovative information professionals and their strategic partners. SLA serves some 11,000 members in 75 countries in the information profession.
Volume Honors Cole’s Contributions to Library
For more than 30 years, John Y. Cole has led the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress as its founding director and has devoted his scholarly pursuits to the Library’s history and influence on the culture of the nation. To recognize his achievements, the journal “Libraries & the Cultural Record” has just published a festschrift—a book in his honor—devoting an entire issue to his more than 40-year career at the Library of Congress.
“The Library of Congress and the Center for the Book: Historical Essays in Honor of John Y. Cole” is a special issue (2010, vol. 45, no. 1) of the University of Texas journal “Libraries & the Cultural Record: Exploring the History of Collections of Recorded Knowledge.”
According to issue editor Mary Niles Maack of the University of California at Los Angeles, the nine invitational essays published in the volume “address topics representing different aspects of John Cole’s contributions and interests as a scholar and a librarian.” In particular, she notes, they emphasize his dual roles and achievements as the sole director of the Center for the Book and as a scholar who is also “known internationally as the foremost expert on the history of the Library of Congress.”
The essays are grouped into four broad themes that, according to the editor, “characterize John’s career and scholarly interests: The History and Historiography of the Library of Congress; The Center for the Book; The History of Books, Reading and Publishing; and International Perspectives.”
The issue also includes a chronology that documents Cole’s education, professional experience, awards, honors and major professional activities. The 25-page bibliography of Cole’s publications was compiled with assistance from the Center for the Book’s Staceya Sistare-Anderson.
Current contents of “Libraries & the Cultural Record” are available through Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/libraries_and_culture/toc/lac.45.1.html. Single print issues are available to individuals for $22 and to institutions for $36 from the University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819; www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/jlc.html.
In 2011, the Library of Congress, in cooperation with the University of Texas Press, will publish a cloth-bound, expanded and updated edition of “The Library of Congress and the Center for the Book: Historical Essays in Honor of John Y. Cole.”
