Activity/Artifacts

• Mercy Corps Clearspace: The implementation and use of an online collaborative workspace in a distributed global organization
• Poster presented at Sofia 2008: Globalization and the Management of Information Resources, Sofia, Bulgaria, November 12, 2008. (PDF)
• Presentation at Online Northwest 2009, Corvallis, Oregon, February 13, 2009.

I have learned a great deal in the short time I’ve been part of the library community: through my SLIM classes, through my work, through professional organizations and conferences, and through my interactions with all the wonderful people who make up the library world. It’s not surprising that librarians are so good about sharing information and teaching each other, but it certainly is a blessing to someone just starting out in the profession.

Information sharing is a two-way street, of course, and as I have begun to feel comfortable in the profession and like I have something important enough to contribute to our disciplinary conversation, I have become more actively involved in professional information sharing. I have linked to two examples above - artifacts from professional presentations I gave in the last year. The first one is a poster I presented at Sofia 2008: Globalization and the Management of Information Resources, an international library and information management conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria in November 2008. The second link leads to the slideshow and abstract for a talk I gave at , the first one at Online Northwest 2009, a regional Library technology conference held in Corvallis, Oregon in February of this year.

Both presentations concerned Clearspace, the virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing platform we use at Mercy Corps. As library professionals gain wider information management responsibilities within organizations they are becoming increasingly involved in efforts to implement virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing systems. As someone who has had the opportunity to observe and help manage the implementation and growth of such a system, I feel like I can offer insight into its organization, management, and usage that might be of value to others approaching these issues.

Values

• Value self and others, i.e., possess confidence in one’s decisions and value diversity in its many forms.
• Demonstrate leadership by displaying vision, and adaptability, openness to new ideas, and risk-taking behavior.