91´«Ã½

CHICAGO—The 2018 Lois Mai Chan Professional Development Grant has been awarded to Treshani Perera, a recent graduate of the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Lois Mai Chan Professional Development Grant was established in 2017 by the of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) to support travel to the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½) Annual Conference and Exhibition for librarians and paraprofessionals from traditionally underrepresented groups who are new to the metadata field. It encourages professional development through active participation at the national level. The $1,000 grant may be applied towards airfare, lodging and other ticketed events related to attendance of the 91´«Ã½ Annual Conference. The recipient will work with a member of the grant jury or the CaMMS Executive Committee to identify relevant programs and interest group sessions to attend; attend at least one CaMMS program, committee meeting, or interest group meeting; and record her conference experience for “ALCTS News.”

Perera has worked as an intern at the Southeastern Wisconsin Information Technology Exchange Library Consortium (SWITCH) in Milwaukee, the Ward Irish Music Archive in Wauwatosa, Wis. and several areas at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries. Through her internships, she gained experience with metadata creation and maintenance using the MARC21 format and non-MARC schemas, application profile creation; batch remediation of metadata, authority control, the application and creation of controlled vocabularies and indexing; preservation techniques; and project management. In January 2018, she began her first professional positon as the music and fine arts cataloging librarian at the University of Kentucky Little Fine Arts Library, where she performs original and complex copy cataloging for music and media resources, artists’ books and special collections. Perera holds a dual Masters degree in Library and Information Studies and Music History from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Psychology from Berea College (Berea, Ky.).

Perera has actively engaged in professional development activities, serving on committees of the Music Library Association (MLA) and the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG). She has given presentations at professional meetings, including those of MOUG, MLA, the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the Wisconsin Library Association and the Midwest Archives Conference. She has also served as a fellow in the ARL/MLA Diversity and Inclusion program, and as a mentee in the ALCTS Mentoring Program. The jury is confident that attending the 91´«Ã½ Annual Conference in New Orleans will help her achieve her goals of becoming involved with ALCTS and furthering her professional development by connecting her to a wider community of colleagues at the beginning of her career. The jury is pleased to select her as the first recipient of this new grant.

The is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print formats. ALCTS is a division of the 91´«Ã½.