LLOPS Professional Development Seminar
SURVIVE AND THRIVE: EXPANDING SERVICES IN A SHRINKING ECONOMY
Wednesday, April, 29, 2009

Presenter Biographies

Frederick P. Corbit (Fred) graduated with honors from the University of Washington in 1977, obtained his law degree from UCLA in 1980, and completed the mediation course at the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation in 2005.  Presently he is an attorney at the Northwest Justice Project (NJP) which provides civil legal services for low-income people throughout Washington. 

Fred is a past president of the Creditor-Debtor Section of the Washington State Bar Association, serves on the board for Washington Appleseed, was a member of the Governor’s Task Force for Homeowner Security, is a member of the Washington Collection Agency Review Board, and serves on the Washington State Bar Association’s Legislation and Professionalism Committees.  As a result of Fred’s law related activities he has been recognized as a Super Lawyer by Washington Law & Politics every year from 2003 through 2009. 

Susan K. Donaldson is Founder and former Executive Director, Washington Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.  She has served for ten years on the Seattle City Council, the last two as president. She has been a leader in recognizing and promoting volunteerism as the former chair of the Washington State Commission for National and Community Service, which oversees the state's Americorps program. One of her chief concerns has been improving the lives of Seattle's youth. She helped create the Seattle Youth Involvement Network, Youth Involvement Day and Youth Engaged in Service and proposed safe havens for abandoned newborns.

She has served on many national and local boards, including the National League of Cities, the American Association of State Service Commissions, the Washington State Public Trust and Confidence Committee and Children's Home Society of Washington. Her article, “Developing Pro Bono Projects: The Washington Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest,” appeared in the January 2009 issue of the Washington State Bar News.  Sue Donaldson is a graduate of the University of Washington Law School, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College.

Steve Hiller is Director of Planning and Assessment at the University of Washington Libraries and has been active in library assessment for nearly 20 years, presenting and publishing widely on a number of assessment-related topics during that period.  His current areas of interest are in user needs assessment, organizational performance metrics, and developing organizational capacity for assessment.  Prior to his current appointment, Steve was Head of the Sciences Libraries at UW for more than 20 years.   He was recently appointed as Chair of the new ACRL Assessment Task Force.

Steve is also a library evaluator for the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, a regional accrediting body.   He has served as a Visiting Program Officer for the Association of Research Libraries since 2004 working on library assessment with Jim Self and Martha Kyrillidou.  Steve, Jim, and Martha are also the organizers and co-chairs of the biennial Library Assessment Conference which took place in Seattle in August 2008.

Nancy Huling is Head, Reference and Research Services Division, Suzzallo and Allen Libraries. Departments and collections within the Division include Government Publications, Information Services, Microform and Newspaper Collections, Reference, Curriculum Materials, Children's Literature, and Grants and Funding Information Service. Nancy serves as the Libraries' liaison to the Information School, with responsibility for selecting materials for the collections, offering research consultations, and instructing students in research methods.

Aaron Schmidt, in the past eight years has been a circulation clerk, reference librarian, and library director. Shortly after completing his MLIS, he saw the potential of applying new media technologies to libraries and launched successful programs at his suburban Chicago public library. Helping the library connect to its community through instant messaging, weblogs and social software lead to Aaron publishing articles in Library Journal, School Library Journal, Library High Tech News, Online, and others.  In 2005 Aaron was named a Library Journal "Mover & Shaker."

Currently he is the Digital Initiatives Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library but lives in Portland. He helps plan forward thinking, fun projects for the library, helping them connect to the community and teach them about the Read/Write Web. He also assists with website visioning, conducts usability testing, leads the library's Library 2.0 Interest Group and helps coordinate and generate ideas for the library's digital research and development project called DC Library Labs.  He is also a lecturer at the University of Washington's iSchool. You can find him online at his library technology and usability weblog: www.walkingpaper.org.

Michele E. Storms is the executive director of the William H. Gates Public Service Law program at the University of Washington School of Law.  Her previous position was as a statewide advocacy coordinator at both the Northwest Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services where she coordinated civil legal aid advocacy and training in the areas of family law, youth and education, housing, elder law, Native American and right to counsel issues.

Michele started her legal career as a staff attorney at Evergreen Legal Services in 1988 with a focus on family law, custody and domestic violence.  She later served as a faculty member at the University of Washington School of Law in the clinical law program for eight years where she founded the Child Advocacy Clinic.  Michele served on the Washington State Access to Justice Board for six years and is currently a Management Information Exchange board member and is the elected secretary of that body.