Info Newsletter Index

SIS INFO
Vol. 16, No. 4
July 2002

Editor’s Corner

Welcome to the Suncoast Information Specialists' July newsletter!. Of special interest about July:

Movies: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Synopsis: True story of Ron Kovic, a Marine wounded in Vietnam, covering his life from childhood in New York, through his 1964 enlistment and tour of duty in Vietnam, to his harrowing stay at a veterans hospital in the Bronx and eventual transformation into a well-known anti-war activist.

Books: July's People, by Nadine Gordimer (Viking Press/Penguin, 1981).

For years, it had been what is called a "deteriorating situation." Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family - liberal whites - are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July - the shifts in character and relationships - gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites. From the Publisher, Penguin USA

Quotation:

"He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood."

Polixenes, in The Winter's Tale, act 1, sc. 2, l. 169-71. William Shakespeare, on the pleasure his son gives him.

Next Meeting, August 7, 2002

Guests are always welcome.

Volunteers Needed

SIS needs volunteers to serve on the Nominating Committee and to serve as appointed and elected officers for 2003. The slate of elected officers will be announced in the September Newsletter, so our Nominating Committee needs to be formed very soon. If you are interested in volunteering for SIS, please contact Wanda Barrett at wanda@everlove.net  or call 727-345-8180.

Past Meeting, June 2002

SIS members met for dinner on June 5 at the Piccadilly Cafeteria in St. Petersburg. Patsy Shipp Lieb, author, was our guest at the meeting. She shared information about her profession as a reporter and as free-lance writer.

Patsy Leib is a woman who has been in the right place at the right time many times in her life. She has also seen opportunities for what they are and jumped in feet first without worrying "what if it doesn't work out?" She just did it, and continues to do it. She was a wife and mother who wrote for herself and became a recognized and valued member of the journalistic community through a most natural evolution.

She is a great, spontaneous storyteller with a bizarre sense of humor and a homespun, conversational way of describing the events of her extraordinary life. For example, the seed of her career was planted when her neighbor, a fellow writer, asked what the pile of papers was up on her refrigerator. Patsy replied it was her novel, and as she told the story, remarked that she had just taken for granted everyone was working on one on the side. She had no idea at the time that writers' groups met to discuss their work. She rapidly emerged from her former isolation. She spoke of a sequence of events that led her to write a column covering local events for a local paper, continuing it as she and her family moved over time. She found that the details of the crime beats she covered were in demand, and eventually wrote and published true crime stories for detective magazines, based on information gathered from her columns.

Ms Leib's fiction, articles and poetry have appeared in numerous national magazines. Her book Murders In The Swampland contain 17 true crime stories that happened along the West Coast of Central Florida, which she covered while the cop-beat reporter for the Daily Sun-Journal in Brooksville, Florida. For more information about Patsy and her writing, see her website at http://www.geocities.com/patsylieb/ .

Submitted by Rachel Schneiderman

Honored Member

The 2002 Jean Gates Distinguished Alumni Award was awarded by the University of South Florida School of Library & Information Science to SIS member Shirl Kennedy. Congratulations!

Industry Outlook: Public Sector

Beyond the Dewey Decimal: Libraries seek a new breed of information specialists with a taste for public service.
July 14, 2002 San Francisco Chronicle
by Julie N. Lynem, Chronicle Staff Writer

"With a generation of librarians set to retire, library associations and public libraries are looking for ways to attract workers to a profession that involves much more than shushing chatty guests and using the Dewey Decimal System."

The complete article is available at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/14/AW163817.DTL

submitted by Shirl Kennedy

SLA South Atlantic Regional Conference (SARC) 2002

The Sky is NOT the Limit!
Asheville, North Carolina, September 22-24, 2002

Advance (discounted) registration deadline is August 15, 2002. For more details about this regional library conference and continuing education opportunity, see http://www.sla.org/conf/conf_sar/

Officers' Meeting, July 9, 2002

Members present: Wanda Barrett, Anita Lindsay, Betsy King, Rebecca Forman, CD McLean, and Shirley Kennedy.

Treasury - SIS has $726 in its treasury. There were 76 paying members in 2001. As of 7/9/02, 62 members have paid for their 2002 membership renewal. Betsy is switching our checking into a free account with another bank. We agreed to this and signed a letter for the bank.

E-mail List – Concern was expressed that many members not subscribed to our electronic list and that we are not communicating with them. It was suggested that those members not currently subscribed be added to the list

Archives – The board expressed an interest in archiving our historical records, The officers are not sure where all the older records are.

August Meeting – Our August meeting is planned for lunch at Hill, Ward & Henderson in downtown Tampa on August 7. Our speaker has fallen through, so alternative speakers/subjects were suggested.

October Meeting – We hope that Mary Kaye at St. Petersburg College will be the host. We need to elect officers at this meeting.

December Meeting – We hope to have a local storyteller entertain us at the December meeting. She asks for a $25 donation to a children’s charity in exchange for her performance. This would be an evening meeting, and we would also install the new officers.

Donations – We discussed offering door prizes to encourage attendance – especially for people who bring guests. We hope to have prizes donated.

Promotions – Anita will work on a brochure/postcard that we could handout about SIS at other events to promote our group.

Nominating Committee – A committee of two members needs to be appointed. The slate of officers be announced in the September newsletter, at least 30 day days prior to the October meeting. We will vote in October, the officers will be installed in December and they will be encouraged to hold their first planning meeting in December as well. Volunteers are needed to serve on the committee, and to serve as elected and appointed officers.