Member Spotlight – Serge Danielson-Francois
Serge has been the librarian at Divine Child High School in Dearborn since 2007 
when he and his wife moved to Michigan from Texas. Prior to serving at DCHS, Serge worked for the Kansas City Public Library where he served as a branch librarian, Saint Paul School of Theology where he was Public Services librarian, and Cy-Fair College (now LoneStar College Cy-Fair Campus) where he was a reference librarian and coordinated English as a Second Language and Adult Basic Education free classes for the public. Serge earned his MA in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona in 2000. Before entering the library profession, Serge was a foreign language teacher at Rutgers Prep in New Jersey and a fifth grade teacher at Lourdes Catholic in Arizona. Serge participated in the most recent MLA Leadership Academy and is the vice-president/president elect of the Michigan Chapter of the Catholic Library Association. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2002 Missouri Library Association Outstanding Young Librarian Award for his work with adjudicated youth, and the 2009 MCCLA St. Jerome Award for contributions to librarianship. Serge is a member of two honorary societies, Beta Phi Mu and Pi Lambda Theta.
Member Spotlight: Joshua Bernstein
Joshua Bernstein works as a Teen Services Librarian for the Grandville branch of the
Kent District Library. He has been in this position for about 4 years and worked in a variety of positions at the Capital Area District library for about 3 years before that, while working on his MLIS from Wayne State.
In his current position he loves being able to establish relationships with the youth in the community, be it over books, video games, or something else. He has been fortunate enough to establish strong ties within the local school system and have been able to really use that to help make local teens aware of the library and all it have to offer. One current project that he is rather passionate about is a Guys Read initiative that he recently helped develop for his library system. You can check it out at www.kdl.org/teens/go/GuysRead.
He has been volunteering at MLA for 4 or 5 years now. In that time he has been on the Spring Institute committee 3 times. This will be his 4th year and he will be chair. He also spent a year on the Thumbs Up committee and a year on the Fran Pletz award committee.
Michigan Outcomes: Stories That Matter
Member Spotlight: Beth Johns
Beth Johns is the E-Resources Librarian at Saginaw Valley State
University, Zahnow Library. She began working at Zahnow in 2006, shortly after receiving her MLIS from Wayne State. As an electronic resources librarian, Beth manages access to the library’s online journals and administers the library’s link resolver software. She troubleshoots access problems with these resources and is called upon almost daily about some sort issue—there is never a dull moment where e-resources are concerned! Beth has also recently initiated a “roving reference” service at SVSU, which is currently in a pilot stage. She hopes to extend that service outside of the library in the future, perhaps as far as the housing areas of the campus. As is expected of most academic librarians, Beth does a significant amount of bibliographic instruction, which she finds very satisfying personally and professionally. Beth’s history with MLA goes back to her student days starting in 2002 when she joined MLA. She volunteered as a student during Annual Conference a few times and then began serving on committees and work groups once she received her degree. She has served on the MLA Awards twice, Michigan Author Award, and most recently Academic Libraries 2010 (member) and 2011 (co-chair).
Member Spotlight: Karren Reish
Karren Reish is the Library Services and Technology Act Coordinator for the Library of Michigan. That means that she oversees the federal dollars that come into the state. She’s been working in the Library Development department at LM for six years and has other responsibilities including Youth Services (Michigan Reads! and the Summer Reading Program). She is also Chair of the Michigan Center for the Book (www.michigan.gov/mcfb). Karren served on the Board of MLA from 2003-2005 and then worked on the Professional Development and Networking Committee for four years. She also completed MLA's Leadership Academy. This year she is participating in the Summer Reading work group. At the 2011 annual conference in Kalamazoo, Karren presented on the Michigan Center for the Book. MCFB promotes developing local partnerships for great programming. If you don’t have all of the staff you need to do a program in-house, you can call on the resources in your community. By leveraging your community relationships you can do uncommon good by finding others with common goals. Karren is an outstanding example of a devoted librarian. She is professional, smart, hard-working, and a creative problem-solver.
Karren tells us about herself.
When asked to describe herself in three words or phrases Karren notes that she is: a devoted reader, well-organized, adventuresome cook.
