Roberta Shaffer
Email: rsha@loc.gov
In August 2005, Roberta I. Shaffer became the Executive Director of FLICC/FEDLINK at the Library of Congress. Before assuming this post, Shaffer was the Director of External Relations and Program Development at the College of Information Studies, University of Maryland—College Park. Her main responsibility was to coordinate the rollout of a new graduate degree, Master of Information Management (MIM). She taught courses on information use and users, legal information, management, and strategic planning. Shaffer also served as the College development officer.
Shaffer had a short tenure as the executive director of the Special Libraries Association, and resigned that post in March2002 to found a consulting practice in information management called TheKnowLedgeGroup. She had previously been the Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas—Austin. For eight years, she was the Director of Research Information Services at the Washington-based international law firm, Covington & Burling, and oversaw the firm’s libraries in the U.S. and in Europe.
Shaffer has worked in the nation’s capital at the George Washington University Law School Library and at the Law Library of Congress. At the University of Houston (Texas) Law Center, she was the Director of the Research and Writing Program (Legal Communications), and concurrently was the Associate Director of the Law and Technology Center. During her year as a Senior Fulbright Researcher, Shaffer worked on legislative projects at both the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and at the Portuguese Ministry of Justice.
Shaffer received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a concentration in demography from Vassar College; her law degree is from Tulane; and her master’s in librarianship from Emory. She is admitted to the District of Columbia, Texas and United States Supreme Court bars.
Shaffer developed and coordinated the Law Library and Legal Information Track at the Catholic University of America, and continues to teach Competitive Intelligence and Management courses there. She has written numerous articles and is a frequent speaker at law, library and leadership conferences. Her areas of interest focus on knowledge creation, capture and mobilization; on the role of the information professional in a knowledge-based enterprise; and on the development and evaluation of professional competencies. Recently, she has become interested in the use of storytelling, structured scenarios and improvisation as management and decision deployment tools. Roberta is a long-standing member of the World Future Society.
For several years, Shaffer has been an advocate for the arts and holds a graduate certificate in Arts Management. She is also a master swimmer. She and her mother collaborate as jewelry designers under the name “Cornelia’s Jewels” (after the children’s story). Shaffer and her West Highland Terrier, Suzy Snowflake, are active supporters of Canine Companions.
Class taught:
IRLS 564 Coporate Library and Information Center Management syllabus
IRLS 520 Ethics for Information Professionals syllabus
