I am pleased to announce that Rita Evans is the recipient of the Division’s Professional Achievement Award. Rita is Director of the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library at the Institute of Transportation Studies, the University of California, Berkeley.

Rita joined the Transportation Division in 2001. A true leader in every respect, Rita has served as Kaleidoscope (newsletter) editor, Secretary/ Treasurer (before the positions were split), Chair- Elect/Program Chair (where she substantially revamped the GTRIC program), Chair, and Past Chair. She has worked on strategic planning, revised our governing documents, served on the Nominating and Elections Committees, moderated sessions at SLA, and solicited a donation of $10,000 from the UTC program for use in promoting our programming and professional development efforts. Rita has further served SLA on the Division Assessment Task Force for Division Cabinet, where she advocated the concept of viability for small divisions, and as President of the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter.

Rita is equally active in transportation librarianship outside of the Transportation Division, including:

• TRB – is a member and Secretary of the LIST Committee, is a member of B0002 – the Information Services Committee, and has made panel, workshop, and poster presentations at the Annual Meeting
• Has been a friend or member of the RAC/TKN Task Force since its inception
•Is currently a panelist on the NCHRP 20-90 project “Improving Management of Transportation Information”
•Has worked with Roberto Sarmiento/Northwestern University and Lisa Loyo/TRB to expand the scope of the TLib Program and identified new ways to contribute records to TRIS/TRID
•Authored the transportation resources section in the 1st and 2nd editions of Using the Engineering Literature, edited by Bonnie, Osif and published by CRC Press
•Supported a project to provide original cataloging of National Technical Information Service reports (in collaboration with Northwestern University)
•Is a supporter and advocate for the National Transportation Knowledge Network (NTKN) where she initiated a transportation resource document-sharing program as one of the first TKN projects. Additionally, Rita is a member of the Western Transportation Knowledge Network (WTKN)

Rita’s dedication to our profession has benefited the community in many ways, and we look forward to what the future will bring. Please join your fellow Transportation Division members at the Division’s Business Meeting and Luncheon at the SLA Annual Conference in June, where we will honor Rita in person.

Thank you Rita for your tireless work in supporting and promoting the Transportation Division – and Congratulations!!

Transportation Library Colleagues,

It is my honor and privilege to announce to you that Roberto Sarmiento has been designated a 2012 SLA Fellow.  Congratulations Roberto!   No more than five Fellows are designated in a given year.

From the SLA website:  “Fellowship in SLA is bestowed on mid-career SLA members in recognition of past, present, and future service to the Association and the profession.  The designation of Fellow is presented to active professionals who are not presently serving on the Board of Directors.  Fellows are called upon, and expected to advise the Association’s Board of Directors, to prepare necessary documentation, and to alert the membership to issues and trends warranting action.  Individuals receiving this honor will be able to use the title Fellow of the Special Libraries Association.”

 Roberto’s professional contributions include:

• Gift Management for Transportation Libraries: Observations and Recommendations
• A Collection Development Policy Template Proposal for Transportation Libraries
• Migration of Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) records into TRIS (now TRID)
• The TLib Program – an agreement between the University of California – Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies Library and Northwestern University’s Transportation Library to contribute records into TRIS/TRID
• Migration of 3800 transportation theses records into TRIS/TRID
• Long-time member and past chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) B0002 Committee
• Original cataloging of National Technical Information Reports (NTIS) (another co-op project with UC – Berkeley’s ITS Library)
• Preservation of the SLA Transportation Division’s communications and organizational memory though establishment of the Division’s archives at Northwestern University’s Transportation Library
• Founder, supporter and sustainer of the Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network and the National Transportation Knowledge Network
• Forthcoming chair of the TRB Library and Information Science for Transportation (LIST) Committee and past committee member for many years

When Kate Arnold approached me last fall about this honor for Roberto, she asked if I would be able to gather the necessary information and documentation in a short time frame for her to arrange and submit to the awards committee.  She was well aware of working with Roberto in an SLA setting, but did not have much knowledge of his involvement with both the Transportation Division and the transportation information community at large.  It was an honor for me to perform this task, and in doing so, not only discovered the wide involvement of activities, committees and projects Roberto has been involved with, but also how much of Roberto’s involvement is dedicated to the greater good for all of us in our profession.  As part of my information gathering process, I want to thank the valuable input I received from Bob Sweet, Rita Evans, Barbara Post and Sheila Hatchell, each graciously giving of their time on very short notice.

Thanks again Roberto, your recognition is so well-deserved!

 John

Last month, an updated version of http://libraryconnectivity.org/ went live.

As the project website for FHWA’s TPF-5(237) Pooled Fund Study topical news, special products, and other information is provided.  The project’s goal is to provide a full-time consultant to offer technical assistance to member libraries and to carry out an annual work plan aimed at improving information access.

Right now, for example, the project’s Technical Advisory Committee is in the process of selecting special information projects for FY2011-12. These are intended to benefit the community at large. For more information, contact Maggie Sacco at msacco [at] hsinfocus [dot] com.

Congratulations to Roberto Sarmiento, Head of Northwestern University Transportation Library, for his award winning paper, Gift Management for Transportation Libraries: Observations and Recommendations. Roberto received the Division’s newly created Innovation Award along with its $1,000 prize at the Transportation Division Business Luncheon at the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday June 14, 2011.

For information about the Innovation Award and to link to the full text of Roberto’s paper, see here. As the award was created to stir innovation, we look forward to more entries in the future.

Thanks so much, Roberto, for this gift to the Division and to all libraries!

Have you received your new issues of Public Roads yet? In the the May/June 2011 issue is a fantastic article from Transportation Division member Jennifer Boteler entitled “Masters of Information”. The article highlights several ways the transportation library community is an important arm of transportation research, collaborating across organizations and disciplines. Great work, Jennifer!

On April 20, Barbara Post of the Transportation Research Board was presented with the 2010 Raymond Von Dran Memorial Award by the School of Library and Information Science at the Catholic University of America. The award is given once annually to a CUA/SLIS alum who exemplifies Von Dran’s qualities of innovation, collaboration, and leadership.

Barbara Post has been a librarian with TRB for almost 30 years. She oversees the TRB library and the bibliographic database, Transportation Research Information Service (TRIS), a database of over 730,000 bibliographic records of transportation research, which makes it the largest transportation research database in the world. Barbara has been instrumental in innovations to keep TRIS relevant and to expand its accessibility, functionality and content from an era when all TRIS searches were done by TRB staff on a proprietary system, to an era when TRB forged relationships with commercial vendors to provide remote access, to the emergence of the World Wide Web as a platform for the delivery of the first publicly accessible version of TRIS. She has also collaborated with transportation libraries in Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia to share their records with TRIS.

Barbara is an active member of the Transportation Division of SLA, in particular, the annual Government Transportation Research Information Committee’s (G-TRIC) program at SLA’s annual conference. Her innovation, collaboration, and leadership are evidenced in the many ways she has contributed to the world of transportation research, and by the many people in transportation librarianship she has influenced, mentored, and inspired.

With Barbara at the ceremony were three of the seven people who nominated her for this award: Jessica Fomalont of TRB, Nelda Bravo of the Federal Highway Administration, and Eileen Boswell of the Community Transportation Association of America.

Left to right, Jessica Fomalont, Barbara Post, Nelda Bravo, Eileen Boswell
(Originally posted by Eileen Boswell)

A.J. Million recently blogged the value of transportation libraries, updating ROI work that had been done in the 2003 MnDOT report. Check it out!

(Originally posted by Kendra K. Levine)