Mark Baer Award

by Libby Trudell

Reprinted with permission from Faultline Vol 25 Issue 4 pg 6.

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