SARA AULL

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There may be one or two of our NC/SLA Chapter members who may not know her, so I will mention that Sara Aull is a long-time member of our Chapter who is a highly-respected professional and a champion of student members. Our Chapter's Student Award is named for her. Didi's article, although written six years ago, pays Sara a warm, genuine tribute while reminiscing about the early days when Didi first met Sara.

Here is Didi's article.

THANK YOU, SARA
By Didi Pancake

THANK YOU, SARA.

I guess I was just lucky. I got involved with SLA and special librarians even before I decided to go to library school.

My father kept asking what I planned to do with a B.S. in biology -- teach? get more degrees and research? get a job washing test tubes? He was a research laboratory administrator who had been attending Texas Chapter SLA meetings trying to find a special librarian with a science background to hire (or steal.) So when I didn't know what to do with my B.S. degree, he sent me off to talk to three or four of these folks about their field. The rest, as they say is history.

Without exception, they were interesting people doing interesting work. I, who had "studied" in the library at college maybe twice and didn't really know beans about finding information in a library, was impressed. I mean, at this point, I didn't even know that "The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature" existed!

Well, the GSLS at the University of Texas at Austin changed all that, plus it taught me about such arcane matters as book selection, various cataloging systems, and the whole spectrum of reference books out there in Libraryland. But, in all honesty, I was simply doing stuff to "get my ticket punched" so that I could go to work in a special library.

To that end, I joined SLA as a student member, and this was back in the days before student chapters, so I was a student member of the regular Texas Chapter, and those were the meetings I went to and the people I met. That's how I found out what it was like out in the "real world" of special libraries. That's how, once I did get a job, I tied into an "instant" support group way off in Virginia where I didn't know anybody at first.

From over twenty years' professional perspective and speaking as a Fellow of SLA, the most important thing I did with my SLA membership card was to use it rather than sit on it. And more importantly, use it to meet working librarians from all sorts of organizations. As a student member of SLA, I think the most valuable thing you can do for yourself is to go to the regular Chapter meetings in your area. Sure, you can hang around with the other students and compare classes, projects, and grades, but as an SLA member, you can go to those regular Chapter programs, learn from the speakers, and build friendships with the people who will be working colleagues in another year or so. It's the best time and money investment you can make.

I have lots and lots of SLA friends today, all over the country. They have bailed me out when I needed a quick copy of an obscure proceedings paper, they have brainstormed with me on all sorts of topics, we've served as references for each other, commiserated with each other on everything from inflation to "information-blind" bosses, taught each other the hints and shortcuts that save sanity, and we've done a lot of laughing throught it all.

I would be hard put to choose the one SLA member who has meant the most to me and my career both inside and outside of SLA, but in the end, I have to thank Sara Aull, former Science Reference Librarian at the University of Houston, who has been my friend and mentor in SLA ever since the day my father sent me to talk to her when I was thrashing about looking about for a career.

Thank you, Sara, and I just hope that all the student members of SLA are fortunate enought to find wonderful friends and excellent mentors in this organization as I did.

Did Pancake, retired director 
Univ. of Virginia Science & Engineering Library,
Fellow of SLA and former SLA president