A Different Kind of Washington Insider RICHARD HUFFINE IS AMONG THE RISING LEADERS OF THE WASHINGTON, DC CHAPTER. IN THE FEW SHORT YEARS HE HAS BEEN AN SLA MEMBER, HE HAS LED THE CHARGE TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY AND ACCESS TO THE INFORMATION WITHIN THE INDUSTRY
BY FORREST GLENN SPENCER
Joined SLA: 2004 Current Status: National Library Coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey Last Job: Web Analytics Manager, USA.Gov Experience: 12 years as a professional librarian. Education: BA in Business Administration, Appalachian State University, 1991; MLIS, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1995 First Job: 1986 - Summer Intern, Shenandoah Summer Music Theater, Winchester, Virginia First LIS Job: 1995 - Substitute Reference Librarian, Asheville-Buncombe Library, Asheville, North Carolina Your Biggest Challenge Today: Making the transition to digital libraries without losing the intrinsic value of libraries and the books they have collected |
Richard Huffine is a third-generation librarian. He relishes the legacy, along with fond early memories of climbing the stairs of an old house that was converted into a branch library. "My mother worked in my elementary school and public library when I was growing up," he recalls. "My grandmother ran a branch library in the public library system in the mountains of Tennessee. I didn't necessarily think about going into libraries initially."
Huffine was originally going to be a theater manager, having earned his BA in business administration with a minor in theater from Appalachian State University in 1991. "But then I started working in the college library as a work studies student of government documents. That's where I cut my teeth on the whole SuDOC [Superintendent of Documents Classification] system." It was that exposure that lead him to pursue a new career in library science and an MLIS from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, in 1995.
Today, Huffine, 39, is the national library coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia. The federal agency is responsible for providing reliable scientific information on Earth sciences. There are three other main libraries connected to the Reston office: Flagstaff, Arizona; Menlo Park, California; and Denver, Colorado. For nearly two years, Huffine's job has been to coordinate the activities of the four libraries.
"I oversee the allocation of funding and the direction the library system goes into," he describes. "I don't have to supervise the people in the process. The libraries are unique and distinctive in many ways. They share a library catalogue and they share an acquisitions process. I refer our researchers to their services." Huffine is responsible for the convergence of USGS's physical and digital content and services. "One of my first tasks at USGS was to write a digital library plan--essentially, where the library is and how we are going to change to accommodate the digital. That plan should be published this year. I am excited about that because in this new world I think a lot of organizations are saying, 'Isn't it all online?' And the answer is probably 'No, not yet.' Not everything is online. Even if it were, you would still need people that know how it is organized and what you need and how to present it. When we go all digital, we will have librarians involved in the process because they know how to organize that information."
It is this type of initiative and leadership skills that put Huffine in the SLA spotlight of "members to watch." This year, at the SLA annual conference in Seattle, Huffine was the recepient of the Dow Jones Leadership Award, selected by the SLA Awards and Honors Committee and presented to a member "who exemplifies leadership as a special librarian through excellence in personal and professional competencies." Huffine was selected "in recognition of the value he has brought to revolutionizing the emergence of librarians on the Internet. In his role, he has successfully understood and strategically leveraged the power of the Internet to make librarians savvy technology professionals serving a global community."
Huffine is one of those rare people: a motivator and a doer. He doesn't allow the grass to grow around his feet. His respect for the role of the information specialist inspires him to push beyond boundaries and horizons, and his vision of what is possible within the profession has become infectious among those who know him and work with him and who call him colleague, associate, or friend.
Advocate for Government Libraries
Inside and outside of SLA, Huffine has emerged as a chief advocate for the government librarian. That's because the federal government has been a big part of his career, which began as a contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the spring of 1996 as their sole "Internet Librarian." The position blossomed into a management position in the next year, a year that became a watershed moment in the history of the Internet: the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft.
"My role for the first 18 months was maintaining the EPA home page under the direction of the EPA staff," Huffine says. "Librarians shaped that Web site in its early days--from its content to its sidebar data. An organization as complex as the EPA always struggled with its 'front door.' To be involved in the 'front door' of a major agency at that time in history was a wonderful opportunity."
Later, he became involved in the EPA libraries budgetary cuts. He said he was shocked at the decision to close some of the EPA libraries. Huffine worked to promote the value of the libraries. "We presented the EPA with a business case that showed them a positive return on their investment for their regional libraries. We were trying to build a service of excellence in areas of specialty in different locations, and there was a budgetary push to make a dramatic cut. There were people who thought the libraries would survive the cut. Congress, SLA and other associations came together to say that those libraries provided critical information on the issues of environmental impact, climate change, etc. They made the argument that the material that is available to the public and to the researchers was extremely valuable."
Huffine, eventually, resigned in October 2005. He could not, with a clear conscious, be part of the system that was going to close the libraries. As for the EPA today, there was an earmark in the FY2008 budget that requires restoration of library services. Huffine believes that they will be small and more linked into a network of library services from the EPA. And, as government librarians are fully aware, a tighter budget is the challenge of all federal libraries today.
Not only did Huffine leave the EPA, he took a break from being a special librarian. It was a choice that would add a new value to his skills. "I became the Web analytics manager for USA.gov, which is the major Web site for citizens looking for information from the federal government. As a librarian, I was able to take my perspective as a user of information and look at statistics and data generated from the Web site. It's more than numbers; it's what the numbers tell you."
He said it was a wonderful opportunity to tell the story of the users of USA.gov, but after a year he was missing being a librarian and working in a library. Huffine applied for another position, this one with USGS. As Huffine remembers, "They were looking for someone who can look at the digital side and the physical side of libraries and bring them together."
Starting a New SLA Division
Huffine's first SLA conference experience was in 2003, when he traveled to New York to accept an award from Thomson Dialog. Talking with SLA members during that event helped him decide that SLA would make a wonderful network opportunity to his career. He joined SLA in January of 2004 and soon met SLA's then new executive director, Janice Lachance, as well as past-presidents Guy St. Clair and Cynthia Hill. He arrived in Nashville for the 2004 SLA conference ready to network and learn from colleagues across the spectrum of special libraries.
"At that time, the SLA military librarians were voting in Nashville as to whether or not to change their name and include other government service librarians," Huffine recalls. "They voted against that idea. When I heard of the news I was encouraged to start a division for government librarians. Janice Lachance told me how to set up the division and the next thing I know I'm walking around the SLA conference as a full attendee, having people sign a petition to create a government information division." The Board of Directors accepted the petition and brought the SLA government information division into existence in October 2004 with Richard Huffine as its first chairperson.
Everybody in SLA pitched in and helped. "Linda Broussard was amazing as the leadership coordinator to help me become a leader and get together our governing documents," he says. "We put together a great slate of officers." Huffine and his officers decided the government division would be a little different from other SLA divisions; they decided that they would focus on partnering with other divisions. "So much of what the business librarians use is government information," he notes. "The education division uses the ERIC [Educational Resources Information Center] database from the Department of Education. Our work is in so many other divisions that we didn't want to create our own programming initially--we wanted to partner with others. It's really blossomed and taken off." Huffine, today, serves as past chair of the division.
Working for DC's Libraries
Huffine's activities outside of SLA and government librarianship were also recognized in his honor by the Dow Jones Leadership Award. His leadership extends into the Friends of the Library in the District of Columbia, where he currently serves as president of both the Federation of Friends of the DC Public Library and the Friends of his neighborhood branch. He has become one of the driving forces in the revitalization of DC Public Libraries, a system that has suffered horribly in its infrastructure and bureaucratic operation from during the last 15 years.
"When I got involved four years ago," Huffine explains, "the library was open 40 hours per week. Now, the public libraries are open 56 hours per week, and there's been a 33 percent increase in the DC public library budget." Huffine helped raised $7 million for the DC libraries through direct advocacy. "We had the mayor tour our public libraries to see the shape they were in and the opportunities to renovate them. My neighborhood public library is one of four Carnegie Libraries in DC. The building was built in 1925. It's a beautiful structure. Our ward councilmember Jim Graham is a huge preservationist and a fan of the library. We have the most diverse area in the District; every walk of life lives within a half-mile of our library."
Involved in Lubuto Project
Huffine has also become involved in SLA member Jane Myers' project in building libraries for street children in Zambia. He met Myers through the DC Chapter and started sending the Lubuto Project donations. But soon more discussions led to more direct involvement. Huffine says, "We share an understanding: it's not just about books, it is a culture shift in empowering individuals. You can go to the library and learn something, or you can go to the library and watch a DVD or listen to music or find someone who has similar interests. She's doing this for street children in Africa. I am hoping to do that here for the citizens in DC. While information is readily available on the Internet, there's a role for librarians and for the library to play. We need to make it a community effort rather than an individual one."
Huffine is currently working with the Lubuto Project on implementing a project of one laptop per child. They recently received a donation for the laptop project. Huffine and others are currently working on ways to best implement the plan, and he hopes to visit Zambia in 2009 or 2010. Huffine is a world traveler, escaping once a year to locales such as Portugal, Egypt and, this year, China.
What Lies Ahead
As a librarian looking at 40, Huffine is excited in what lies ahead for the profession and the opportunities to explore. He continues to pursue his interest in the convergence of physical and digital libraries, and to help find solutions to the profession's challenges.
"One of the things that is puzzling in our profession is metadata creation and cataloging. ... I've been looking at metadata and how it is created and managed. I value the input of cataloging librarians--their rigor and their discipline--but I'm concerned by the future sustainability of that." Huffine has been studying the semantic Web and semantic interoperability, or how information can be managed if it's tagged appropriately. "I think these worlds are going to come together," he adds. "The challenge will be how well they merge and if we have a generation of cataloging librarians' expertise available to us by the time that happens. I do personal reading on it; I don't believe we've solved the problem yet."
As for SLA, Huffine hopes the association will become involved with enterprise content management (ECM) and records management. He believes those areas are outside the library field right now, but individuals working in those disciplines are having to relearn a lot of what the libraries and librarians know.
"As we are a group for professional development of information professionals, not just librarians, we have an opportunity to reach out and network with a whole group of people who are fighting similar battles with different types of information," he explains. "Defining ourselves with the library world gives us clear relationships with vendors and publishers. But, as we look where organizations are struggling today, I think we need to learn more about ECM and reach out and educate those communities about what we know about managing information."
Within SLA, Huffine will continue to work with the organization and explore professional development programs that benefit the membership. One day, he hopes he will be able to serve as a member of the Board of Directors and serve as president of the SLA DC Chapter. He also maintains an affiliation with the American Library Association (ALA), where he currently serves as chair-elect of the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Roundtable of ALA for 2010.
"I've got a foot in both camps," he admits. "Right now I'm just working to serve the needs of government librarians. I've been working very hard with SLA and ALA to do that. SLA will always be my home for professional development." Part of his job with the ALA division is to form a committee on legislation and to look at the legislative issues facing federal libraries. "One of the things we are missing is any clear mandate that agencies have libraries. We as a profession need to consider how agency libraries are funded to support the needs of federal employees and of the public. We have a new administration coming to the White House in 2009, and there are opportunities to sway information policies from within, depending on what their views are," he adds.
Richard Huffine is a long way from the North Carolina mountains where he grew up. While he is a third generation librarian, he is the first generation with this level of activity in the profession. Part of the work he explores and conducts today will affect a new generation of librarians as the continuing convergence of physical and digital libraries develop into a single symbiotic entity.
"I was so happy to tell my grandmother before she passed away that I got my masters in library science. It's a wonderful legacy to have. Ultimately, what we do will be a good thing. We'll be better positioned as we go digital. We are in the lead." SLA
FORREST GLENN SPENCER is President of SpencerConnects LLC, an information service and public relations company based in the Washington, D.C., area. He can be reached at fgspencer@gmail.com. |
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