This article profiles Allison Sloan, the 2010 winner of "LJ"'s Paraprofessional of the Year Award, sponsored by DEMCO, Inc. Her outstanding service and her championship of the term paralibrarian illustrates her passionately held and most fundamental belief: "This is not just a nice job, this is a career." When she launched that…

In education, it is possible to find dozens of examples of "forced" reading incentive programs that categorize student reading levels, provide limited reading lists coordinated with those reading levels, assess student reading through computer-based tests, and award tangible prizes when they pass the test. Those who perform best get the most…

For Jill Emery, an interest in librarianship came at an unusually young age. Today, Emery's earliest colleagues would be proud, not just of the vibrant career Emery has established for herself but for what she has done to lead the profession into the digital future. As director of electronic resources at the University of Houston, Emery is at the…

A recent library school graduate, Corey Harper was nominated by his colleagues at the University of Oregon (UO) because of the key role he played in implementing digital collections. Along with technical expertise, says Watson, he brought with him "[an ability to] balance idealism with expediency, the striving for perfection with the need to…

As head of information technology at the Prior Health Sciences Library, Eric Schnell likes to improve products that don't fully meet his library's purposes. His first major software product, the award-winning Prospero Electronic Delivery Project, is a web-based document delivery system designed to complement Ariel[R] by converting documents to a…

Provides detailed outline of a process for establishing a merit pay plan for public libraries, including guidelines for developing a job classification scheme and salary schedule, evaluating personnel performance, and making merit pay decisions. (CLB)

Much significance is attached to college degrees in modern society. The fact that many individuals have become victims of fraudulent institutions that award degrees without the rigorous courses of study prescribed by legitimate institutions, suggests that there may be too much emphasis upon the form rather than the substance of higher education.…