Newly Elected PLA President, Pam Sandlian Smith
Announced Friday, April 29, Anythink Director Pam Sandlian Smith has been elected 2017-2018 Public Library (PLA) Association President. A division of the American Library Association, PLA helps provide a diverse program of communication, advocacy and programming for the advancement of public library services across the country. Voting was open to all PLA members.
“I am continually amazed at the energy and enthusiasm people have when they get a chance to experience our Anythink libraries,” says Pam Sandlian Smith. “It is such an honor to be able to represent our community on a national and international level as President Elect of the Public Library Association. I look forward to being part of the conversation about the importance of public libraries in our society.”
Under Sandlian Smith’s leadership and vision, Anythink transformed from the worst funded library system in Colorado to one of the most recognized library brands nationwide. During her tenure, Anythink was awarded the 2010 National Medal for Library Service, the 2011 John Cotton Dana Award for Outstanding Public Relations, the 2011 Library Journal Landmark Libraries award, and is a grantee of the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation learning labs project. Sandlian Smith was the 2010 Colorado Librarian of the Year and the recipient of the 2012 Charlie Robinson Award for innovation and risk taking.
Through her speaking and writing, Sandlian Smith stimulates discussions on innovation, creativity and participation in libraries worldwide. Previously, she was the director of the West Palm Beach (Florida) Public Library and the manager of Children’s Services at the Denver (Colorado) Public Library. She is a member of the working group for the Aspen Dialogue on Public Libraries. She enjoys traveling, hiking, baking pies, walking her Great Pyrenees—Buddy Einstein Doodle—and inventing libraries that help people fall in love with learning.
Video: Pam Sandlian Smith Speaks at TedXMileHigh in 2013 on, “What to expect from libraries in the 21st century”
Video: 2014 Presentation by Pam Sandlian-Smith on ” Creating Experience Libraries”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From Penn State: Penn State University Libraries has expanded its robust scholarly research potential of one of America’s foremost 20th-century writers through the acquisition of the Toby and Betty Bruce ...
From Politico: Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
From a ULC Release: The Urban Libraries Council’s new member tool — the Business Value Calculator — provides public libraries with a concrete way to measure and evaluate its contributions ...
From an Ithaka S+R Post by Kurtis Tanaka: As Ithaka S+R’s research has well documented, people in prison have profound information needs and suffer from an equally profound lack of resources ...
DeepMind’s New Chatbot Uses Google Searches Plus Humans to Give Better Answers (via MIT Technology Review) Inside the 15,000-Strong Record Collection at Hawaii’s State Archives (via Vinyl Factory) South Carolina: ...
Direct to the Full Text of the Resolution Introduced by Congressman Raskin 7 pages; PDF. From PEN America: With free expression and the freedom to read being undermined in America’s ...
From a Joint News Release: Paolo Manghi, CTO of OpenAIRE, is co-leading an international team led by University of North Texas that has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation ...
From ALA (via YouTube): R.L. Stine has been writing scary stories for more than 30 years. His books have sold more than 400 million copies and have been translated into ...
From a DPLA Announcement Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the release of January 6th on the Record: The Investigation into the Attack on the U.S. Capitol, ...
How Libraries Became Refuges for People With Mental Illness (via Slate) New Online: Special Issue of IFLA Journal to Mark the 20th Anniversary of the IFLA Statement on Libraries and ...
“Restricted Access: An American History of Book Banning” event was held at the New York Public Library on September 21, 2022. A video recording is available here and also embedded ...
