The Upstate New York Chapter of SLA has three executive board positions open for the next term. These positions are President-Elect, Secretary, and Director, Membership & Recruitment. Candidates for these positions are listed below along with brief, candidate-submitted biographies.
Information regarding voting in the election will follow soon.
PRESIDENT-ELECT (unopposed)Three-year commitment (President-Elect 2010; President 2011; Past President 2012); leader of the Upstate New York Chapter.
Amelia Birdsall
Amelia Birdsall is a librarian and the web content manager for the New York State Small Business Development Center, where she provides business reference services, and is responsible for website maintenance and social networking projects. Amelia holds a bachelor's degree from Haverford College, and earned her Master’s in Library/Information Science from the University at Albany in December of 2005. As a student, Amelia interned at the Empire State Development and the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation libraries and was co-president of the SLA student group. Following graduate school she worked for the Film Literature Index/EBSCO Publishing, and enjoyed a short stint at the Bethlehem Public Library reference desk. As the current UNYSLA Director of Membership & Recruitment, Amelia has enjoyed meeting so many members, and looks forward to continued service to the chapter.
SECRETARY (choose one)One-year term; records minutes for UNYSLA board meetings; assists board; must be able to attend board meetings.Susan Kendrick
Susan Kendrick is a Public Services Librarian at Cornell University's Management Library in Ithaca, NY. Prior to her employment with Cornell, Susan worked in the Visual Resources Library at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. Susan earned her MLS from Pratt Institute in 2005.
In the winter of 2008, Susan became actively involved with the UNYSLA Advisory Board when she was asked to be co-editor of the UNYSLA bulletin, Upstate Update. During the summer of 2008, Susan was asked to lead the newly formed Communications Committee, to switch the bulletin to an online format and to merge it with the Web site. She has thoroughly enjoyed her experience working with UNYSLA’s officers and members and is eager to continue contributing to the chapter.
Donald Schnedeker
Donald Schnedeker has been a member of the Upstate Chapter since 1977. He started his
library career as a reference librarian in the business library at Cornell and became director of that unit library in 1988. In 2003, he took on part-time responsibility as director of Cornell's hotel administration library. In 2008, he assumed this role full time.
Donald has participated on many campus wide library committees in public service and collection development areas. He has authored several articles that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship and was one of the charter members of the Academic Business Library Directors group. He compiled and edited the Academic Business Library Statistics, formerly College & University Business Library Statistics, for twenty years. In 2002, he received the award for outstanding achievement in business librarianship from SLA's Business & Finance Division.
Donald would be honored to serve as secretary for the chapter.
DIRECTOR, MEMBERSHIP & RECRUITMENT (unopposed)Two-year term; works with membership committee to develop and implement membership recruitment and retention procedures; assists board.Alexis Mokler
Alexis Mokler is currently working as a Library Information Specialist for the New York State Small Business Development Center. Alexis has a B.S. in Criminal Justice and Psychology from Elmira College and MSIS from SUNY Albany. She has worked in public, state, and private libraries.
Alexis’ library career started at the young age of eleven when she started volunteering for her local public library. After five rewarding years of shelf-reading and cleaning library books, she started her first paid job at sixteen as a library page. While in graduate school, she worked as a graduate assistant for the New York State Library, helping research upcoming grant opportunities while assisting in the administration of current grants. After interning for the Small Business Development Center during her last semester of graduate school, she was awarded a full-time position with the SBDC.
Alexis is currently the LISTSERV manager for UNYSLA. Her professional interests lie primarily in the field of research and information literacy.
Nominating Committee, Upstate New York Chapter of SLA:
Mary Beth Bobish, Chair
Elizabeth Brown
Rachele Petrella
