Mark Baer Awardby Libby Trudell
Reprinted with permission from Faultline Vol 25 Issue 4 pg 6.
At the 25th Anniversary celebration, Past President Libby
Trudell announced the joint winners of the Mark Baer
award for 2005. Both winners are founding members of
the Chapter and each has remained active over the past
25 years—a remarkable accomplishment in itself. Furthermore,
each has made significant contributions to the
information professional community.
Linda McKell
Linda was born in Palo Alto, grew up in Los Altos, and
later went to Foothill College and Brigham Young University
in Utah. Her undergraduate major was in Humanities
with an Art minor, and she also earned a MLS.
Linda returned to the Bay Area after college and was
hired as an engineering librarian at Systems Control in
Palo Alto. She left there to start a library for Four-Phase
Systems in Cupertino. While there, Linda also worked at
Stanford’s Terman Engineering Library before leaving
both jobs to start AIM. (Working two jobs was a good
foundation for starting a business!)
She started Advanced Information Management, or AIM
as it has come to be known, in 1984. Her premise was
that many organizations needed libraries and many librarians
coming out of library school did not know how to get
“special” library jobs without having scientific and technical
backgrounds. Since she had been able to do it in her
library career, Linda wanted to help others find out how to
“break into” this field. She also wanted to help organizations
to find appropriately qualified people. For over 20
years that is what she and her staffs have done throughout
California and a variety of other states. AIM has had
placements in New York, Virginia, Colorado, Arizona,
Utah and Tokyo, among other areas!
Some of Linda’s hobbies are horses, painting, gardening,
hiking, biking, and endless home improvement activities;
therefore, she is a very well rounded lady.
She also was one of the founding members of the San
Andreas Chapter of SLA. Although she did not help
organize the first meeting, Linda attended with a hundred
other people. At the door they were handed a slip of
paper asking if they would be willing to serve on a committee
or hold a position. She responded to the call and
was elected as the first Treasurer. Since that first office,
Linda has served as a Director, Chair of the Hospitality
Committee and as a member of a number of other committees
including Nominations.
Linda feels that SLA has been instrumental in helping her
career in libraries. Involvement in SLA has provided her
numerous learning opportunities through serving in Chapter
leadership roles, professional development training, and
workshops, to name a few. Attendance at meetings has
broadened her perspective on the world of information
and business through hearing outstanding speakers. In
addition, the friendship and contacts she has made with
other Chapter members has been most invaluable.
The awards committee felt that Linda especially deserves
the recognition for her boldness in stepping out of the
tradition after many years as a successful special librarian
and creating a business that has helped many professionals
through changing times, in addition to mentoring and
encouraging people through her business. She has been a
presence in the entire state of California as well as in the
association.
Karen Takle Quinn
Karen has an extensive career in knowledge management.
Karen was head of the engineering library at Princeton
University in 1962 where she designed a new library. She
also reviewed over 400 engineering journals and communicated
with the Princeton professors to understand the
many different areas of engineering. Her next position was
at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor where she
helped develop the new School of Information Science.
Karen taught three courses there: a management course, a
reference course, and a literature of science and technology
course.
At this same time, Karen won a grant from the NSF to
research how much of the German engineering literature
was coming to the United States, also to examine how
advanced the Germans were in their research. Karen
discovered that in some engineering fields the Germans
were 20 years ahead of the U.S.
Karen came to IBM’s San Jose facility in 1965. In
addition to handling reference, Karen was in charge of all
information retrieval west of the Mississippi. Later she
helped to set up a new IBM library involved with software.
She also designed the library at the Santa Theresa
facility. Karen was an early adopter of technology. In
1974 IBM had an online catalog available to everyone.
Staying at IBM, she took a new role in an international
executive marketing center, pitching software and hardware
all over the world. From here, Karen went to work
on the Application Development Cycle and set up
a customer advisory council. Karen also worked on
another project to develop an information warehouse to
manage information on all of IBM’s products in one place.
During this time, Karen was a West Coast Editor for a bimonthly
scientific information journal and taught courses
from 1971 to 1985 in San Jose State’s graduate library
program. Karen continues to teach management courses
at Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU) in
Belmont, California. Her current research project, partially
funded by Notre Dame, is exploring what knowledge
innovative organizations are looking for in their recent
hires. In 1996 Karen received a Ph.D. from Fielding
University of Santa Barbara. Her dissertation was titled
Facilitation in Computer Supported Meetings.
Karen has been a popular worldwide speaker and has
numerous publications. She was the editor of a book
titled Advances in Office Automation, v 1. In 1985, she
was elected Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists,
UK. She received the 1990 Distinguished Alumna
Award from Rutgers Graduate School of Communication,
Library Studies and Information Science for her many
professional innovations.
Karen belongs to a number of professional associations
but has given much of her time to SLA. Prior to serving
as Director to the San Andreas Chapter in 1999-2000,
Karen was a Director of the SF Chapter from 1965 to
1967. Karen has been a regular contributor to the
FaultLine, contributing book reviews to most of the
issues.
The San Andreas Chapter is indeed fortunate to have two
such talented, experienced and supportive lifetime members!
Congratulations to Linda and Karen!
Libby Trudell E–mail: ltrudell@netbox.com
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