“Information Resource Consultant

Education and Experience

Sarah has a BS in Mathematics and Physics from Southwest Missouri State University and a D.M.D. from SIU-SDM. She earned her MLS from University of Missouri. Sarah worked at St. Louis Public Library where she cataloged non-print materials: music, sound recordings and computer software. Sarah first operated a library mainframe computer in 1977. She has worked in school library media centers and in public libraries. She even got to drive a bookmobile!

Interlibrary Loan

Today so much information is available electronically that Sarah constantly trains member libraries staff to effectively search and borrow from such resources as Illinet Online, St. Louis County, Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County and OCLC WorldCat. The members also learn how to use OCLCs interlibrary loan products from Sarah. Her training sessions emphasize the customer service aspects of providing interlibrary loan at the local library.

Databases

Sarah is an expert with electronic databases like FirstSearch, ELI, and NoveList. She works to keep up to date with their latest features in order to assist librarians and other staff.

SWIRL

Information requests come not only as requests for materials but also as requests for information. Sarah meets with the Southwest Illinois Reference Librarians (SWIRL) as they work to strengthen their reference skills and resources.

Readers Advisory @ your library

Patrons have other needs besides informational so Sarah works with the Readers Advisory @ your library group. Readers advisors help patrons find a good book to read. Sarah shares ideas with readers advisory staff via READERS (electronic distribution list). She adds links in the LLSAP (GateNet) to help direct staff and patrons from one author to another. For an example, look up the author Michael Crichton in the LCLS catalog (http://webcat.lcls.org) or the English detective Inspector Morse to see the links or breadcrumbs to other authors.

Cataloging

Sarah spends half of her day cataloging all material formats for the Illinois State Librarys Cataloging Maintenance Center. Here she works with records that did not match any of the bibliographic records in the OCLC WorldCat database during the quarterly LLSAP batch loads. Sarah looks up each record, finds matches, edits the records to current AACRII standards and sends them to the originating LLSAP. Improved access to these materials benefits all libraries and patrons with faster access to material, both in-house and interlibrary loan.

GateNet

Sarah rounds out her day with cataloging duties by running the global repair programs in the GateNet database to update records, freeing catalogers to add more access points! And, other duties include being the third string back-up computer operator; Sarahs first job here just so you know it wasnt a total new experience to absorb. “

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