Two DC/SLA members, Chris Zammarelli and Janel Kinlaw, have been selected to receive the SLA Rising Star award in 2012. This award, presented to four professionals with less than five years experience in the field, is given in recognition of their early-career achievements and significant contributions to SLA. Janel and Chris were recognized on July 15 at SLA’s 2012 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO in Chicago. Their bios are listed below.
About Chris
Chris is a contract metadata librarian on behalf of ATSG, LLC for the Office of American Spaces at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs. He received his MLIS from the University of Maryland and wrote his masters thesis on Web 2.0 tools and other advanced content on state government websites.
He has been active in the Special Libraries Association since 2005. He served as chair of the Government Information Division in 2009 and led the division conference planning for the SLA 2009 Annual Conference while serving as chair-elect. He presently serves as the Government Information Division’s webmaster, and is currently the chair of SLA’s First Five Years Advisory Council, which aims to help new professionals in SLA establish themselves as they start their careers. In addition to DGI, Chris is also a member of the Taxonomy Division and the Washington, D.C. Chapter. In 2007, he received DC/SLA’s InfoCurrent Scholarship, which is awarded annually to an accomplished student-member (he joined SLA as a student in 2005) who exhibits great professional potential. Chris also ran for the SLA Board of Directors in 2011, and has contributed several library and information publications.
To learn more about Chris, please read his bio on his website chris.zammarelli.com.
About Janel
Janel is a broadcast librarian at NPR where she has catalogued thousands of NPR stories, answered audio reference questions, and led a project to launch a new search and editing interface for NPR’s programming archives.
Since joining SLA as a student in 2005, Janel has helped the Washington, D.C. Chapter (DC/SLA) make great strides in the areas of programming and outreach. As a member of the 2010 Program Planning Committee, she hosted three Leadership Lecture Series sessions, organized and led a tour of the NPR Library, and played a key role in planning the chapter’s 70th Anniversary/Volunteer Appreciation event by finding its speaker. She was awarded the chapter’s conference stipend in 2010 to allow her to attend SLA’s Annual Conference and continue to build her network and leadership skills. In 2011, she coordinated the “Make-a-Connection” program, which paired nearly 60 local graduate students with active professionals who shared their daily work experiences. Janel has also been a member of and chaired the SLA Technical Standards Committee. To hear Janel speak about her experience with SLA thus far, visit http://my.sla.org/?p=688.
Janel is active in other professional associations as well as SLA. In 2010, she was named an American Library Association Emerging Leader and is currently serving as president for ALA’s New Member Roundtable. Janel graduated from Susquehanna University with a bachelor of arts in information systems. She earned a master’s in library science from Drexel University. She enjoys reading and blogs at http://bibliophibian.blogspot.
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To read more about SLA’s 2012 Rising Stars, click here to view the full press release.
