MEMBER A-LIRT

Although Sylvia Nicholas has been an ALA member for only a few years and a member of LIRT since 1993, she didn't hesitate to volunteer to serve as chair of the Membership/Public Relations Committee of LIRT when outgoing chair Carole Hinshaw asked for an energetic soul to step forward a little over a year ago. "I really love ALA as an organization. I think this is a wonderful profession," she says, and it shows in the opportunities she takes to encourage MLS candidates to join ALA as student members just as she did in 1989.

Before taking her first professional position in 1991, Sylvia had worked in a number of different fields and had moved around the country a bit, living in San Francisco from 1984 to 1986, and again from 1987 to 1988. About that time she came to the conclusion that she wanted to become a librarian and enrolled at Wayne State, receiving her MSLS in December 1990. While in library school she worked at Wayne State's Shiffman Medical Library as a reference assistant for three semesters, and at Purdy/Kresge Library as an Interlibrary Loan Graduate Assistant for her entire graduate career. Thanks to the ALA Placement Service at the 1991 Midwinter Conference in Chicago, she just celebrated five years as a reference librarian at Northwestern University's Galter Health Sciences Library.

In addition to providing traditional reference service, answering general questions, teaching users how to use NUcat, the Northwestern online catalog, and conducting literature searches and teaching users how to search Medline at Galter, she is also responsible for the creation of the library's in-house newsletter and a variety of publications which include handouts, teaching tools, signs, and brochures. Bibliographic instruction at the Health Science Library takes place on several levels. "Because we have a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, hospital personnel, doctors, and miscellaneous health care providers, we do it all. We have formal classes every month in a computer classroom that allows hands-on experience. We have 'How to Find It' online catalog searching classes weekly, taught one-on-one in the library. I have been primarily responsible for these one-on-one sessions. We also teach anything and everything by appointment."

Sylvia's philosophy of librarianship includes the view that all librarians are teachers in one way or another. Every librarian contributes to the ability of a user to learn and use information and develop information gathering skills, whether they are adding access points to the catalog or teaching people to do their own research. She always attempts to take the user to a higher stage of independence in using the library, but finds that some of her library's users, many of them established faculty and doctors, do not always seem to want to be self-sufficient. In those cases, she adjusts to their levels and information needs. She sees keeping up with an ever more sophisticated student user population, one with classroom computer experience from an early age, as a challenge to librarians everywhere -- a challenge which can only be met by increased computer literacy and knowledge of a variety of computer applications by librarians.

As a relative newcomer to LIRT, she states that she is still feeling her way around the Round Table and still getting to know people. She admires the dedication of the group's membership, its diversity, and the quality of the programs it sponsors. The biggest challenge she sees for LIRT and for all of ALA is finding a way to get people involved who want to be professionally active but who cannot afford to attend national meetings. Her recommendation includes attempting to involve those librarians in ALA-sponsored activities in their regions or local areas.

Sylvia's outside interests are many and varied, several of them related to the idea that she must have been an artist in a former life. She is a calligrapher, a quilter, and an avid woodworking refinisher. She loves to create anything from start to finish. She has a Power Macintosh at work and at home, and in the past few years has developed skills in desktop publishing, which may lead her to art school and work in computer graphics. She is an excellent cook, specializing in Greek food, and makes the best spinach pie "this side of the Atlantic."

Looking back, Sylvia reflects that fond memories of trips to the Detroit Public Library with her father were a major influence in her decision to become a librarian. Because he worked in the city, he always took her to the city library, rather than the small suburban public library closer to their home. The city library was an impressive monument of a building with a wonderful children's collection. She thought the ability to check out books from Detroit Public Library was a special privilege granted just to her father because the library realized what a special person he was. Apparently, her later discovery that all Michigan residents have that same privilege didn't change her early feelings for libraries. "I'm particularly happy to be in this profession and proud to be a librarian." The profession, and LIRT, are lucky to have someone as enthusiastic and committed as Sylvia Nicholas.