LITA names newest Emerging Leaders

Mary Taylor


LITA Executive Director


312-280-4267

mtaylor@ala.org

For Immediate Release


November 18, 2008

The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) Board of Directors has selected Holly Tomren and Lisa Thomas to participate in the ALA 2009 Emerging Leaders Program.

Tomren and Thomas will receive LITA sponsorship, which will include a $1,000 stipend to help offset the costs of attending the 2009 Midwinter Meeting and the 2009 Annual Conference. In addition, Lisa and Holly will each work on LITA projects and be mentored by the LITA leadership.

Tomren is currently electronic resources & metadata cataloger at the University of California, Irvine Libraries, where she coordinates bibliographic control of electronic resources and leads the Libraries in the analysis and use of metadata to facilitate access to digital collections.

Thomas is currently digital collections librarian at Yale University, where she provides technical and managerial oversight for e-collections activities, e.g., e-books, digital archiving and curatorial projects.

The LITA Board wishes to ensure that its Emerging Leaders have meaningful leadership experiences within LITA; therefore Thomas will work closely with the LITA president-elect on aspects of the LITA strategic plan implementation. In addition, she will work with a group of new Emerging Leaders on creating new LITA leadership programs with the Membership Development Committee. Tomren will work closely with the LITA Web Coordinating Committee and a team of new Emerging Leaders on a Social Software Project. These Leaders will work to determine the appropriate “social software” functionality to deploy to meet the needs of the membership. Analysis will include why the software is needed and how it should be deployed. The leaders’ group will have access to LITA’s sandbox servers and technical assistance from volunteers.

The ALA Emerging Leaders Program enables newer librarians from across the country to participate in problem-solving workgroups; network with peers; gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. Each participant is expected to provide one year of service to ALA or one of its units.

LITA had a number of excellent applicants and congratulates these additional LITA members on being accepted into the ALA Emerging Leaders Program as well: Xan Arch, Chanitra Bishop, Hilary Davis, Jennifer Falkowski, Ahniwa Ferrari, Beth Larkee, Shu-Hua Liu, Michelle McKinney, Adam Murray, Charles O’Bryan, Emily Symonds, Sara Thompson, Leigh Vrabel. LITA has a very bright future with such bright, rising stars.

LITA, with more than 4,000 members, has been serving the needs of the library and information technology community since 1966. Its mission is to educate, serve and reach out to that community through its programs, publications and other activities.