Library Journal Movers and Shakers 2008

The March 15 issue of Library Journal includes the list of Movers and Shakers for 2008! Trying to browse the list of recipients on the LJ site, however, will cause you to beat your head to a bloody pulp on the nearest wall, so take my advice and don't even try. Jessamyn has created a nice brief list of recipients with hyperlinks to the articles about each and Connie Crosby has compiled a list with annotations on her blog. Librarian By Day took Jessamyn's list and added links to the recipients' blogs. Librarians are ace problem solvers, don't you think?

Here are a few highlights from the list, based on my initial reading:

Jessica Moyer and Jennifer Nelson are two librarians in the Twin Cities. Moyer is doing research on readers' advisory and has published Research-Based Readers' Advisory. She is also is adjunct faculty at my own College of St. Catherine. Nelson has created the MicroEntrepreneur Resource Center (MERC), a partnership between the Minneapolis Public Library (now part of the Hennepin County system) and Neighborhood Development, Inc. She has also developed teen technology programs in conjunction with the Science Museum of Minnesota (for more information, see this article in School Library Journal). Thanks to Library Journal for introducing me to two librarians doing great work in my own neck of the woods.

I'm delighted to see the impressive and indefatigable David Rothman on the list. LJ highlights Rothman's LibWorm, which is indeed a very handy aggregator and search engine for RSS feeds in in Libraryland. As a library professional in a academic medical library, however, I rely heavily upon Rothman's excellent blog to keep me current about all things pertaining to "Medical Librarianship and Web Geekery".

I'm very interested to learn more about the health education and outreach work to Hispanic communities of Annabelle V. Núñez at the University of Arizona, such as the Arizona Hispanic Center of Excellence, created in partnership with the University of Arizona College of Medicine. I would love to see more academic medical librarians and libraries doing this kind of work in their communities.

Even though he isn't a librarian, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing is most deservedly a Mover and Shaker for showing us all what libraries could be doing with social apps, tagging, personalized virtual collections, integration with Google Books and just plain making data about books fun and findable. Sometimes, it takes an outsider to show us what is possible.

Congratulations to all of the 2008 Movers and Shakers!

Looking ahead to next year, it would be great to see some of our colleagues from outside the United States on this list. Submit your nomination here. Also, maybe someone could give the nice folks at Library Journal a little refresher course on Web site usability so that they pay a little more attention to their site design.

Update: Cindi at Citegeist is adding to the aggregate knowledge of the hive mind by creating a Google spreadsheet to collate date about the Movers and Shakers from 2002-2008. If you want to help gather this data, please let her know.