The 2005 C. Berger Group Entrepreneurial Promise Award winner at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is Dorothea Salo, who received the prize at commencement on Saturday, May 14 at the Wisconsin Historical Society. She was selected by the faculty for this honor because they felt she could easily thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. She is quite adept at many technologies that an academic or special library might use and she has helped create opportunities for herself and others at the University. Dorothea was also involved in professional activities there: she taught several workshops (one at a continuing-education conference), joined LITA, and was instrumental in organizing ALA President Michael Gorman's campus visit in May. She was also recognized for her strong communications and research skills: in 2004, she won the Valmai Fenster award (given for outstanding promise of exceptional scholarly contribution to the library profession) for her innovative paper on database searching by the blind. This year, she was selected by Beta Phi Mu (Beta Beta Epsilon Chapter) as one of the Outstanding Student Scholar Finalists. In short, they agreed that she was smart, a hard worker, and a generous person.

Ms. Salo brought a varied background with her to library school. After graduating with a concentration in Spanish and Comparative Literature from Indiana University, she earned a master's degree in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and taught Spanish to Madison undergraduates for two years. In 1999, she left academia for a job in the publishing industry, focusing primarily on electronic text applications. She was employed as an electronic publishing specialist and typesetter, a position in which she designed and documented SGML and XML definitions for scholarly books and journals and as an XML/OEB developer, converting books to new formats. It was there that she learned that "you don't butt heads with New York publishers -- they don't care about what happens to content after it is printed." Because she DID care, Dorothea investigated yet another career change -- into the realm of libraries.

She liked where SLIS was -- that plum location overlooking the lake was spectacular -- and she was pleased with how well students, faculty, and staff socialized, so it was not a hard decision to choose UW at Madison.

Dorothea liked many aspects of the library program. The diversity of students was energizing: there were recent grads and PhD candidates in their 50's, a wide range of ages and fields of study, and they were all fun to be around. Students learned from each other as well as from faculty. She also enjoyed the content of her courses, including those picky little rules and new ways to organize things. In retrospect, it is difficult for Dorothea to narrow down her accomplishments at SLIS to one; she said she came to the program with existing technical skills, but gained much necessary knowledge of the human/patron service side of librarianship, learning how to determine what people wanted and how to serve them well. Library school also helped her to overcome old fears of having to write and keep pace with schoolwork. Winning the Valmai Fenster award proved that she had overcome those concerns handily.

During her studies, Dorothea received an assistantship with the Puerto Rican Census Project at the University. Not only did it underwrite her financial needs but it provided her with an opportunity to employ her strong language and technical backgrounds. She also worked under contract for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped helping to make electronic versions of K-12 textbooks; other freelance contracts included designing Internet Web sites, converting data, editing specifications, and performing technical reviews. Her dreams of obtaining a permanent position working with technology in an academic library have come true. Dorothea will be starting a new job as a Digital Repository Services Librarian at George Mason University in July.  This is another step toward her ultimate goal of helping create access to electronic reading resources, for the blind and disabled through sound accessibility practices, and for the scholarly and scientific world through open-access publishing.

What advice would she give to library school students? First of all, keep an open mind and try everything! That's how she learned about managing subscriptions. Next, get as much on the job experience as you can -- it all counts -- and finally, get up in front of people so you can learn to be comfortable talking to them. That will help you during your job search and later in life as well. Excellent counsel from a model new librarian with an exciting career ahead of her!