Written by: Justin Gaynor
Edited by: Genevieve Hammang and Michelle Sosa
The Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus (author photo).
Did you know there is a Library of Sourdough? Or what about a library housed in a tree? While these are extreme examples, you might be surprised at how many libraries are in your city that you’ve never seen or even heard of:
- Many hospitals have a library on the premises or at least a librarian responsible for managing the information requirements of the health care staff
- Law libraries are more familiar and many larger firms employ one or more dedicated librarians
- Many museums, particularly art and history museums, contain a library
- Engineering firms often employ librarians to keep them current on the many standards that guide their industry
The librarians that work in these types of institutions banded together in 1909 to form the Special Libraries Association (SLA), which encompasses almost everything except for public and school libraries. Each year they have an annual meeting, which this year was held from June 07 – June 10, 2025 on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. This year’s meeting was special indeed, as the Special Libraries Association is scheduled to dissolve before the end of the year. The future of the organization, at this moment, remains murky, with the most likely outcome a merger with ASIS&T. While this plays out at the national level, it will be business as usual at the SJSU student chapter.
My personal kickoff for the event was the New Members Mixer, organized by SLASC President Erin Robinson, former SLASC President Laura Dowell (currently at CSU Dominguez Hills), recent USC MLIS grad Tim Palmer and University of East Carolina librarian Erin Gray. These four together organized several events to welcome new members, greatly facilitating the networking portion of the event. At this event I first met several of the other scholarship winners (who received funding from SLA to attend the event), including three students from the UK and one from India, as well as many locations across the United States.
Another highlight was the annual meeting of the Engineering Committee. As President-Elect of this community, I was part of the ceremony to award SJSU student and SLASC Communications Director Emily Stockton the SPIE SLA Engineering Library Student Award (SPIE is the well-known International Society for Photonics and Optics). We also awarded Engineering Librarian of the Year to Kelly Bunting of Analog Devices, Inc, as well as the Lifetime Service prize to Dr. P.K. Jain at the University of Delhi.
Left to right: Prof. Wei Zakharov, P.K. Jain, Kelly Bunting, Emily Stockton and the author at the annual Engineering Community Meeting.
In my role with the Engineering Community, I arranged a fun, free event at the Allegheny Observatory. While the observatory is technically part of the Pittsburgh campus, I seem to remember a very hot, packed bus ride with about thirty other SLA members, including Emily. We learned about the history of the observatory originally built as a sort of “gentlemen’s club” where the city’s elite could get together and have intellectual and scientific discussions while peering at the stars. There was a well-stocked astronomical library emphasizing the role this observatory played in the history of the science, including the first publication of the methods for figuring out how far away other stars are from us – a practice still in use today. The end of the tour was a peek at some of the research currently being done by high school kids from the area, who have discovered new asteroids and done other impressive work.
SLA members lining up in the Big Scope room.
The keynote speaker for the event was Emily Drabinski, former President of the American Library Association. The focus of her speech was on the importance of librarians working together to solve their problems – everything from how to keep staplers from disappearing to implementing new technologies that both improve and impede the free flow of information. Members of the Mechanics’ Institute share privileges with sixteen other Membership Libraries across the country, showing that we too value collaboration with our peers.
Erin and Laura, mentioned earlier, gave a well-attended and well-received talk on “Leading the Way: Leadership, Marketing, and Student Engagement in the SJSU iSchool SLA Student Chapter.” This was a great plug for SLASC and our current and past leaders are a big part of the reason SJSU consistently wins the “Chapter of the Year” award. And we’re not quite done praising Laura yet: along with myself and Tim Palmer, we received the “Rising Star” awards during the final day’s award ceremony. This was quite an honor and I deeply appreciate SLA’s support of the next generation of librarians.
Because there were so many things going on at the same time each day of the conference, I’m sure I missed a lot. But I also made so many new friends, learned a lot about different approaches to our jobs – not to mention the huge variety of jobs SLA members do! The SLA, I learned, is famous for knowing how to put together a conference, which is one of the reasons (honestly) ASIS&T is anxious to merge with us. As a final reward, I had a nice bus ride back to the airport with former ALA President Emily Drabinski, who was also our keynote speaker.
If you get a chance to attend this meeting next year, in whatever guise it takes place, I would strongly encourage it.
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