One of the key points that has driven the Alignment Project
is that we info pros have to use language that the marketplace understands. And
we have to make the marketplace—that is, those who employ SLA members—aware of
the strategic value of information and the ROI for hiring info pros.
What I found most interesting in the findings were the discrepancies
between what the C-suite values and what value we think we provide. Across the
board, our users and clients identify higher-value, more strategic aspects of
our service as our key value, whereas we tend to define ourselves by the tasks
that are required. Upper management already appreciates the importance of good
information, and the difficulty in finding it. Our job is to get them to see
that we are the missing link between information and actionable intelligence.
Now, what we info pros need is courage—to offer insight and to
spot trends for our clients, to add analysis to what we provide. And, more
importantly, in order to be seen as strategic players, we have to move beyond
our traditional skills and add even more value and insight to our information products.
This applies to SLA as an association as well. SLA must
tangibly show its value to its clients – us. That means continuing to explore
new ways to build the professional connections and network that we, and upper
management, value so highly. The other aspect of our association that we depend
on is its ability to advocate for us and to give us the tools to advocate
within our organizations. Studies such as the Alignment Project are critical to
members, and SLA must continue to provide ways for members to demonstrate the
competitive advantage we offer our organizations.
For me, a key takeaway from the findings of the alignment project is that the terms "special library," "special librarian," and even "SLA" do not resonate outside of our profession. I would argue that the terms are not all that clear within our profession, either. I cannot tell you how many academic librarians I've talked with who ask me: "Why are you involved in special libraries? Isn't that for people who work in law firms and companies?" Of course SLA is here to serve those individuals, but SLA also provides extraordinary continuing education and networking opportunities for academic librarians as well, particularly those of us who focus on a specific subject area or those interested in new technologies, leadership, or knowledge management. When our own colleagues don't really understand what SLA is all about, how can we expect CEOs, Presidents, and Provosts to understand our association or even our profession?
It is clear to me that we have an opportunity to make some changes in how we define ourselves and our association. Too often we focus on the tasks that we perform, rather than the value we provide to an organization. While I consider myself a librarian, I look forward to the opportunity to call my professional association something which better defines who we are. I encourage you to join in the discussion on Twitter and on the wiki. What an exciting time to be a part of this association!
For me, the top takeaways from the Alignment Research Report are:
1) We need to align values with perception in the minds of our organizations, so that instead of describing ourselves by the tasks or functions we carry out (eg cataloguer, research librarian etc), we define these tasks in terms of the value, benefit and impactwe bring to the organizational effort or bottom-line - such as "facilitating good decision-making", "advancing or enhancing business development opportunities", and so on.
2) Leveraging the equity or positive attributes of librariaship and all that it entails, whilst using more modern terminology or applications to describe who we are, and what we do - so for instance:
"purchasing" instead of "acquisitions",
"competitive intelligence and analysis" instead of "online searching"
"trainer/teacher" instead of "library instruction"
Both individually, and as an association, adopting these findings will help to tick many boxes of benefits as we undertake the serious business of aligning ourselves and our profession to be meaningful and relevant to our organizations for the next 100 years and more.
It will help us achieve a clear sense of purpose, which may not necessarily be in the boardroom, but on our own terms and perceptible contribution to the organizational effort. It will lead to recognition in the marketplace as critical assets within organizations. This kind of recognition will help to draw new and younger members to "the profession".
But what will that "profession" be? The alignment findings suggest that we have some work to do to come up with a name for this profession that resonates with the high value words and ideas that we as professionals generate. This name also needs to embrace and appeal to all who may see it and think - "yes, I do that" or "I can identify with that".
As our leaders have reiterated several times, we require not just a simple name change, but a total game change. I don't have all the answers yet, and judging by the discussions on the blogs, neither does anyone else - but the key thing is that we have began the discussion and brainstorming of ideas. Are you part of the debate? Now is the time for your voice to be heard as we begin to "align in 09".
The beauty of the Alignment Project is that the results are two-fold, for us as information professionals and for the association as a whole. The research put new words behind the work we do as individuals. We will stop describing ourselves as functions but as strategic thinkers and knowledge workers who bring value to our organizations.
Through the research we can create a road map to guide our association as we enter our second hundred years. We can re-position our association to be more inclusive, to attract members who may have thought SLA did not have a place for them.
The top takeaway for me is now that we have all the research it is time put it into action.
The new portal will bring together everything to do with alignment. We will have the chance to absorb and digest the findings of Fleishman Hillard and Outsell. The Alignment Ambassadors will join SLA leadership to communicate the value and positioning of the Association and the profession. I have heard some people say this is just about a name change. But it is so much more than that. It becomes who we are and how we define ourselves. The research has shown that our current name does not resonate with those outside of the Association – How many times have you had to explain what a special librarian is? If a new name will make our communication and positioning better, I say bring it on. This sounds like a good start to me. I'm excited about the future of the association. We have a lot of work to do andI want to be a part of it. How about you?
In January 2009, I co-authored the article “Strategic Alignment: Positioning Our Brand for the Future,” for Information Outlook with Bill Fisher and Gloria Zamora. We noted that over the past several years, members have felt a burgeoning sense of “career angst” because they are not valued as much as is appropriate. Members saw positions eliminated or sent to project teams with little or no consultation, and salaries for positions similar to theirs outside the information center were paid at a higher rate.
It’s wrong that librarians don’t get enough credit for the value and benefits of their work. And it’s wrong that the stereotype of librarians is limited. We need to right these wrongs. But how?
We will move to where the value is. We will use the concepts from the Alignment Project to create meaning.
We will define ourselves in terms of the values, benefits and impact that we provide such as:
Information professionals: * Advance business and product development * Facilitate good decision-making * Provide the research tools to enable critical thinking
For the Association, we: * Promote members as critical assets * Enhance professional/personal development * Enable global networking
We will define ourselves in terms our manager’s value. Fleishman-Hillard developed a two-by-two grid based on themes that emerged from in-depth interviews (pages 24-30).Guy Kawasaki, in talking about his own two-by-two grid, titles his axes in a way that I think is analogous. The axes are titled: 1) the ability to provide a unique product/service and 2) value to the customer.
“When you have a matrix like this you want to end up high and to the right. This is where you have a UNIQUE product and ONLY you can do this product, and it is of GREAT VALUE to the customer.”
The concepts that Fleischman-Hillard identified as “high and to the right” and therefore of great value are: * Creating a culture of continuous learning * Embracing knowledge-sharing tools * Providing value-added intelligence * That knowledge is the bridge that turns information into action
We will turn information into actionable knowledge that creates a competitive advantage for our organizations.
We will jump to a new curve. Have you heard of the Sigmoid Curve? It’s the s-shaped line used to track the life-cycle of products, careers, and even empires. The line shows initial growth, a period of peak activity, followed by decline. To survive, you must shift to a new curve before the current one expires.
It is my conclusion that the Alignment Project allows us to jump to a new curve—to position ourselves where the value is. We have taken the concept of “special libraries” to its natural conclusion. We need to jump to new positioning and nomenclature.
We will celebrate our legacy with our 100th anniversary, all the while grabbing the next vine and swinging upwards. We may or may not create the perfect name, but we will create one better than what we have now. We need to get going, or in Nike terms, “Just Do It.”
For me, the key takeaway from the Alignment Report is:
The SLA brand is not necessarily recognizable outside of our profession, and this causes a disconnect with how SLA and the profession are perceived by the larger community in which we operate.
As our esteemed leader, SLA CEO, Janice Lachance, once said, this isn’t about a name change, it’s about a game change. The playing field in which we operate has shifted…. It’s time to align.
Ever been to a party and had someone ask you what you do? My usual response is, "I am a corporate librarian." They say, "Oh, what’s that…?" When I begin to explain what I do, they say, "That’s not a librarian." Or last month, when I was telling my non-library friends I was giving a talk at SLA, I was asked, "What’s SLA?" These consistent responses tell me that brands "corporate librarian" and "SLA" do not work, and it is time for us to invent new ones. The SLA Alignment Project is about branding and messaging. It will never change the fact that deep down, I am a corporate librarian -- but it will change the image in people’s mind as to what I do.
The Alignment Project has already provided solid data to support this. It is time to stop describing ourselves in terms of our functional roles (e.g., catalogers, searchers, indexers, reference, etc.) and to start talking about the value, impact, and return on investment we, as library and information professionals, bring to our organizations.
SLA will need to develop clear messaging that articulates and promotes these concepts so that they can be delivered to our target audiences. SLA will need to provide tool kits and talking points that fit various scenarios (as our membership is as diverse as we are similar), to make it easy for our members to communicate their impact and value. Training sessions should be offered to teach our members how to deliver these messages in a convincing manner. All of this will ensure that we have a unified and consistent voice to tell the rest of the world why what we do really does impact the bottom line.
The Strategic Alignment Project report is in and we are beginning to use its findings to change the face of SLA, and likely change our association name. In your opinion – What are the top takeaways from the Alignment Report and how should we as an association use them to move forward?
Candidates will soon begin posting answers to this question. Please read and respond via Comments so we can have an exchange of ideas.
The top two takeaways from the Alignment research:
1) Our association name doesn't resonate with our target audience.
This means we are faced with either mounting a large educational campaign to relate our name with our services (which is the approach SLA has taken in the past), or changing our name to something that leverages our ability to transmit our value to those who would employ us. A name change is not a panacea. Either way we have to educate our target audience about what we bring to the table.
2) We should talk about the value we bring to our users, not the tasks we perform.
This one is illuminating, because we have always been task-oriented and have spoken of our abilities in that way. However, it is clear that our users don't necessarily make the connection we make intuitively, in translating our tasks into valuable services that improve productivity and lead to better decision-making. We need to speak in ways that directly describe the value we provide and the way we can improve the bottom line. That's the language that management speaks, and we have to reflect that.
The Alignment research is intelligence which we now have to translate into action. In a curious way, we now have a role reversal - we are the consumers of the intelligence who now have to decide on a course of action. Normally we provide intelligence to others. In this case, Fleischman-Hillard acted as "special librarians" to us, bringing us the research we need to move forward.
First, we have to absorb the intelligence as an association. That's what President Zamora means when she describes "Alignment Ambassadors". Then, once our membership has absorbed the research, we need to move forward on the two fronts that I described at the beginning of this message. A name change combined with a strategically focused message campaign will begin to reposition us for success in our second century.
SLA’s Centennial Commission map of past conferences caught my eye. Tiny Haines Falls, New York, (population 913) was the site of SLA’s 1915 annual conference. The only possible place could be Twilight Park, a private resort, built in 1888, and my vacation retreat for the past fourteen years. How? Where? What was it like?
Only six years young, SLA held its 1915 annual conference in conjunction with the New York Library Association. The program placed emphasis on the library field of possible service rather than on matters of technique. Men of note from other professions were also invited to address the conference.
Fire has since claimed the headquarters hotel, Squirrel Inn, but a portion of Santa Cruz Inn (shown at left) still stands as a private residence. Santa Cruz was described as the alternate selection for those wanting a quieter environment. A five-minute hike through the woods and you would be at the headquarters hotel. Rates were $2.50 per day, or $3.00 if you wanted a private bath. Groups might rent a cottage. The marketing for the conference outlined various transportation options. You would travel “but six hours by rail from New York City” (100 miles from Manhattan) where the Squirrel Inn stage met all trains.
SLA had 354 members from every section of the U.S. and foreign countries in 1915. Leaders also discussed the need for a Headquarters Office to facilitate the needs of this growing membership.
So, today, on SLA’s 100th anniversary, I’m sitting in my cottage, reflecting on the wonderful journey of information professionals to this centennial marker. Later today, I will hike around the park and find a quiet spot in front of a waterfall and dream the future that is being created by SLA’s 11,000 members as we “Align in ‘09” and what my small contribution might be.
All the photos taken by SLA's photographer during SLA 2009 are available for viewing and download now! These will remain posted for a limited time, so be sure to take a look and download your favorites today!
4.You’ll be brought to your main category page – click through to see the list of categories.
5.To view a category, click on it.
6.You’ll be brought to a page of thumbnails. To enlarge a thumbnail for a better view, click on the image. You can view that category “slide show” style by using the arrows at the top of the screen.
7.You can collect the images you like in a Light Box to review/download at a later time if you wish. The images in your Light Box will remain there until you remove them. To access your Light Box, click on the lightbulb icon on the top right of the screen.
8.To download images click on an image – the dialog box that appears will guide you with your choices for download.
Information sharing. We do it all the time. The discussion lists are busy with requests for assistance in finding a citation, an article, or even a place to start for research on an unfamiliar topic. We strategize about ways to organize and present information, and knowledge, to our clients ways that will be most effective (current awareness services! mobile updates! content management systems!).
Now, have you filled out the 2009 Salary Survey questionnaire? Here's another opportunity to share information with your professional community, and help bolster those requests for salary increases...which might be a tough sell in this economy. Having data, recent data, to present in a salary negotiation will, ultimately, benefit the membership as a whole...and it'll help *you*, too.
The survey instrument is fairly brief (it will take about 10 minutes of your time), and the results will be available for just $7.95 for participants. Links to the questionnaire were distributed through e-mail last week, and the results will be available in September. Please take a few moments to complete the survey, and be sure to click the link at the end for the coupon codes.
For more information about this year's survey, please read this post over on Information Center Connections. If you have questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with me at csosnowski (at) sla (dot) org.
When SLA members meet, things happen. A group of SLA members are circulating a petition for the creation of a new SLA division, focusing on ways to organize and structure information so that content is accessible and useful. The proposed Taxonomy Division would offer a practical context for exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning, creating, maintaining and using taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures. To learn more and sign the petition, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6tJ5CLQkMDsBnVSKgCFHxw_3d_3d. You must be a current SLA member to sign the petition. Contact Margie Hlava (mhlava@accessinn.com) or Janice Keeler (jkeelersla@sbcglobal.net) for more information or to volunteer to help get this division started.
Did you know that our SLA members can now receive a complimentary trial to the BNAInfoDash Economic Stimulus Dashboard?
As the economic stimulus bill creates billions of dollars in funding opportunities, your organization may be among the many that need a source of reliable, focused, up-to-the-minute information. SLA would like to make you aware of an innovative tool created by one of our partners--BNA.
The BNA InfoDash Economic Stimulus Dashboard offers tailored, relevant content to empower your organization's decision-making--in an easy dashboard format. Track the flow of economic stimulus news and dollars, with breakdowns covering infrastructure, energy and environment, health care, communications, education, taxes, labor and employment, and funding opportunities and awards. The dashboard filters news from thousands of authoritative sources, including premium BNA content.
Please join CEO Janice Lachance and 2009 SLA President Gloria Zamora for a post-conference "unconference" at the SLA space in Second Life!
Chat with them and other SLA members about the highlights of the SLA 2009 Conference. Here's a chance to share what you learned at the conference, and ask questions about the conference if you were not able to attend!
Getting started: Haven't been into Second Life yet? This is a great reason to jump in and join the conversation! The SLA in Second Life wiki site has a great section on what you need to do to get started.
Second Life help: Members of the SLA in Virtual Worlds Council will be in Second Life 1 hour prior to the session on the 26th to help you with some Second Life basics, answer any questions, etc. Join us at 7am SLT (7am PT / 10am ET) if you need some additional help prior to the session.
Right next to the DTIC booth was the very busy Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program booth. There was a lot of excitement to be seen at the government booths and the PTDLP booth drew a good crowd.
Patent and Trademark Depository Library ProgramBooth, SLA 2009, Washington, DC
Interested in hearing more about PTDLP? In August of 2007, Chris Black, Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program Librarian, joined Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis Information Professional Consultant, in a discussion about the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program. In this interview, Chris shares information about the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, how the PTDLP uses exhibit space at professional conferences to reach out to librarians, special products and services that they offer, how the PTDLP leverages technology to enhance their training programs, exhibit experience take-aways and more.
Listen from the player, download from the mp3 link and listen at your convenience, or grab it right off iTunes.
In the INFO-EXPO at SLA 2009 in Washington, DC, the DTIC booth was so popular every time that I walked by that the crowd spilled into the aisle. It's great to see government librarians as participants in the exhibits.
Each issue of Information Outlook is unique, but the October/November 2009 issue (Vol. 13, No. 7) will differ from its predecessors not only because of the content it contains but also because of who's determining that content.
SLA President Gloria Zamora has appointed eight information professionals to serve on the new Information Outlook Advisory Council (IOAC). The council will work with the editor of Information Outlook to set the editorial direction of the magazine and determine theme topics. The council will also provide feedback on article proposals and recommend article topics and authors.
The members of the IOAC, who will serve staggered two-year terms, are as follows:
Doris Helfer (chair)
Susan DiMattia
Dennie Heye
Betty Jo Hibberd
Jill Hurst-Wahl
Renee Pope
David Shumaker
Tony Stankus
The council held its first meeting at the 2009 SLA Annual Conference and will soon begin work on determining article topics for the October/Novermber 2009 issue, developing an editorial calendar for 2010, and creating an online survey of SLA members to determine how they use the magazine.
Feel free to contact an IOAC member if you have any suggestions for improving the magazine or if you would like to recommend an article topic or write an article.
Yes, what a week! This conference, which celebrated our 100th anniversary as an organization drew 5,856 conference attendees, up 16% from last year and the most in six years. Conference attendees came from 30 countries. It was wonderful to hear a broad range of languages in the hallways and exhibit hall. Our location was also multicultural, which seemed quite fitting. The Convention Center is a few blocks away from D.C.'s Chinatown. Washington, D.C. itself has residents from around the world and their influence can been seen all around.
Our speakers came from a variety of backgrounds and locations. Retired General Colin Powell was a surprising opening keynote speaker. While most of us had likely seem him comment on foreign policy on some news broadcast, who knew that he would be such an inspirational, funny and down-to-earth speaker?! I was also very pleased to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was part of the final keynote (panel). And I'm very pleased to see that his online profile state that he "was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools clear through his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science." Yes, public education can and does produce people who have a positive impact on our view of the world. (We tend to forget that.)
For those who ventured away from the conference to see parts of D.C., they saw the impact that information has had on our world. For example, data that was turned into information, which was turned into knowledge was at the heart of our missions to the moon in the 1960s as was a tremendous drive to make it so. As Tyson noted, those inspiring dreams create a drive in each of us to contribute which causes us to learn and to participate in careers that we might not consider otherwise. What dreams do we need to inspire our young people with now?
We also had fun. What would be a conference without open houses, networking events, and group activities that provided opportunities for us to know each other better? Activities included a road trip for some to the Mets vs. Orioles baseball game in Baltimore, MD. It seemed fitting that when SLA was in Baltimore that we journeyed to D.C. for game and this year (due to the game schedule) we had to journey to Baltimore!
As has become the custom with our conferences, there is a lot of content out on the Internet about what happened. There are nearly 900 photos in Flickr that have been tagged SLA2009. Technorati currently shows nearly 90 blog posts that use the tag "sla2009", but I would think the number of blog posts should be higher than that (perhaps there are more blog posts on their way?). And there are some videos in YouTube, but they have not been consistently tagged, so it's hard to find them all at once. This year, our Twitter stream carried a ton of information -- much more than last year! Twitter is searchable, so you can find older tweets from the conference.
(Note to bloggers, etc., please tag your stuff from the conference with sla2009. BY using that tag, you conference related content becomes more findable. Thanks!)
With SLA 2009 now history, preparations are underway for the Leadership Summit in St. Louis (January 27-30, 2010) and the next annual conference in New Orleans (June 13 - 16, 2010). With the economy still fluctuating, don't wait until the last minute to talk to your management about the benefits of attending the conference. If you attended to conference this year, write a 1-2 page report for your management about what you learned and how that knowledge will help your organization. If you were unable to attend, talk to your management about what you have gleaned from the blogs, etc., and why attending in person allows you to learn more. When budget estimates are requested for 2010, be sure to include in your estimate funds for professional development. In other words, make sure that your management understands that this is important to you and to them.
Finally, below is a video that shows some of the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall (INFO-EXPO) was packed this year with companies that had exhibited before as well as some new ones to the conference.
Charles Francis, a public affairs consultant in Washington,
D.C. who founded “The Kameny Papers Project" addressed the SLA’s Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues Caucus at their annual meeting at the
2009 Annual Conference.
Mr. Francis spoke about his work with Kameny Papers Project,
an archive of letters, memorabilia, and writings of Frank Kameny. Francis
described Kameny as the “Rosa Parks” of the LGBT Rights’ movement.
Kameny, a veteran from WWII, was fired from his job in the
federal government when it was discovered he was gay. Instead of accepting the dismissal
Kameny began a letter writing campaign to administrators in the federal
government. Mr. Francis distributed copies of letters from the collection,
written by two different administrators in the federal government. The letters
were a stark contrast from language used today referring to LGBT people as “sexual
perverts not suitable for federal employment,” saying that all LGBT individuals
are “automatically a security risk” and “a disruptive factor within any
organization.”
Kameny refused to accept these letters as the final answer.
He appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. He then became an
activist and organized the first LGBT White House picketing in 1966. In the
1973 he stormed the American Psychiatric Association’s Conference and helped
motivate the association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental
disorders. Today at the age of 84 Kameny remains active in the LGBT community
and recently headlined in the Washington DC’s 2009 Capital Pride Parade. Kameny’s
papers chronicles his experiences first as an outraged dismissed employee and
later as a trailblazing activist.
The most remarkable aspect of the collection isn’t its size
(over 50,000 documents) but that the items survived. LGBT material has
historically not stood the test of time. According to Mr. Francis this could be
due to simple neglect or societal prejudice. Mr. Francis described the destruction
of the largest collection of LGBT material by Nazis in 1933, at Magnus Hirschfeld’s
library in his Institute for Sexual Research as an example of governmental
endorsed obliteration of knowledge and history. Because of the incredible loss
of knowledge and history to the LGBT community Mr. Francis sees the
preservation of LGBT material as a kind of activism.
So in 2006, when Mr. Francis first learned that Kameny still
had this material sitting in the attic of his house, he saw the importance of
this collection. Given the hostile history haunting LGBT material Mr. Francis
wasn’t sure how interested the Library of Congress would be in owning its first
openly LGBT collection. However shortly after meeting with the 20th Century
Political Historian of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Mr. Francis
received a letter of interest from the historian that read, “A comprehensive
understanding of history requires that historians, and those who read history,
see how government policies and public attitudes affected real individuals and
how individuals reacted, adjusted, and grappled with their position.”
Mr. Francis worked with a professional appraiser to
ascertain the value of the collection. The problem however was that at the time
there were no other LGBT archival materials to compare the collection to for appraisal.
Once a value was agreed upon funds were raised via private donors to purchase
Kameny’s material and donate it to the Library of Congress. The Library of
Congress spent over a year and half indexing the collection and today the
material is available to the public in the Library’s manuscript reading room.
Mr. Francis finished his presentation by recalling a meeting
he had with Harry Rubenstein, the head of the Politics and Reform section of
the National Museum of American History. Mr. Rubenstein showed Mr. Francis that
the picket signs Kameny used at his White House protest were housed with Thomas
Jefferson’s lap desk and the inkwell Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation
with. What the curator was telling Mr. Francis was that “the gay and lesbian
papers and pickets do not exist in a world apart from the American story; they
actually embody and renew America’s story.”
Doris S. Helfer (right), advocated the need to ensure that library disasters don't become catastrophes at the panel on "Preparedness for Info Pros: Lessons Learned from Recent Disasters," organized by the Museums, Arts, and Humanities Division. The other speakers on the panel were Alfred E Lemmon and Cynthia B. Love.
Slides:
* Doris S. Helfer (ppt) * Alfred E Lemmon (ppt) * Cynthia B. Love (ppt)
You don't stop having fun at SLA conferences just because you are 89. Past President Vivian Hewitt (1978-1979) enjoying her dance with the robot Millenia.
Congratulations to Ann Sweeney, 2009 recipient of the Social Science Division's Gale Group Murray Wortzel Award. The award was presented at the International Reception at the Zambian Embassy - a fitting location as Ann is the organizer of the reception and chair of the Social Science Division's International Relations Section.
The award was established by the Social Science Division to honor the memory of Murray Wortzel, a long-time member of the division whose dedication and commitment to both the division and SLA exemplify the consummate information professional, and is given at the annual conference every other year.
I have been thinking about how I am participating in this conference and how that is different from years past. In 1992 at my first SLA conference, I diligently went to as many sessions as possible. My goal was to learn, learn, learn and ensure that I returned back to my place of work with valuable information. For several years, my modus operandi was to soak up what others were providing during their sessions and visit as many exhibitor booths as possible. If my days went completely full, then I had failed.
In more recent years, I have continued to soak up information. My days are still full, but not always because I'm attending every session possible. Instead this "soaking up" occurs in a manageable number of sessions and during networking events (open houses) and committee meetings. I am also now in a position to give back by giving workshops and presentations. I'm among a wonderful group of people who are providing content that others need.
How are you participating in this conference? Are you soaking up as much information as possible? Are you now at a stage in your career where you can provide information, tips-and-techniques, and lessons learned to others? Perhaps you're doing a bit of both? Knowing that answer can help you as you plan your days.
By the way, if you are here just soaking in as much stuff as possible, know that one year you'll also find yourself providing content to an audience that cares about your viewpoint and knowledge. I hope I'm in the audience for your debut!
The three keynote panelists will be participating in book signings on Wednesday prior to the Closing General Session. Don't miss your opportunity to say hello to these authors and speakers.
Visit the SLA Marketplace, Booth 639, in the INFO-EXPO, 11:00am-11:45am.
Neil deGrasse Tyson will be signing The Pluto Files, Robyn Meredith will be signing The Elephant and the Dragon, and John R. Patrick will be signing Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It, and Why Your Company Can't Survive Without It.
I was so happy to see that L. Ron Hubbard has a booth in the INFO EXPO! He really has a lot to teach us all about integrity in the provision of information. Because SLA is venturing into new waters with INFO EXPO exhibitors, I humbly offer here a few suggestions for folks we can get for future conferences:
Flat Earth Society - Their innovative use of GIS is remarkable
Intelligent Design proponents - Very imaginative use of text analysis
The Government of Iran - Using the power of technology to drive policy
I invite you, dear readers, to add more suggestions here.
It's turned into an annual event, and once again it's a standing-room-only one. This year, the speakers are John DiGilio and Gayle Lynn-Nelson. Among the most interesting sites I heard about were drop.io (share files in real time privately), gethuman (talk to a real person at the company you've been trying to reach for days), and Tripit (get your itinerary organized just by emailing your confirmation to the site). The complete list (with clickable links!) is available at drop.io/60Sites.
I've been attending similar sessions at SLA's annual conference since 2005, but this is the first time I've been able to check out each site as the speaker comments on it... thanks to the excellent conference wifi, which has also allowed me to blog about sessions even before they end. And so, it didn't matter that I was sitting at the back of the room =)
Michael Edson (right), the Smithsonian Institution's Director of Web and New Media Strategy, presented his vision for a new Smithsonian Commons that will provide knowledge sharing opportunities in the public domain. Michael helped to create the Smithsonian's first blog, Eye Level, and the first Alternative Reality Game to take place in a museum, "Ghosts of a Chance." His slides and notes are now available on slideshare:
Gloria Zamora (right) joins this year's Diversity Leadership recipients, from left: Julia Leggett, Regina Beard, Nedelina Tchangalova, Eric Schwarz and Nora Martin.
Five information professionals were honored today at the Annual Diversity Leadership Development Breakfast. Holly Bussey from EBSCO, sponsor of the DLDP awards, presented each of the awardees with their trophies. Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., the featured speaker, shared the results of his research on "The Black Male Librarian: An Endangered Species."
The photos above show Holly Bussey presenting Nora Martin with her award (left), and Julius C. Jefferson, Jr.
Copies of Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat, compliments of Vintage Books, were given to all who attended the annual breakfast. The event was organized by the Diversity Leadership Development Program Committee, whose members include Lyle Minter (chair), Rebecca Pernell, Innocent Awasom, Vernon Totanes, Elizabeth Bibby, Tom Rink and Vernon Hemphill.
For more information about the award and the recipients, check out the press release.
Michael Edson, the Smithsonian Institution's Director of Web and New Media Strategy, will speak at the annual conference on Tuesday, June 16 from 9:30 to 11:00 on "Envisioning the Future of Museum, Arts, and Humanities Libraries." This presentation should be of particular interest to all members since Michael will be describing his vision for a new Smithsonian Commons that will provide knowledge sharing opportunities in the public domain. Michael helped to create the Smithsonian's first blog, Eye Level, and the first Alternative Reality Game to take place in a museum, Ghost of a Chance.
Please join us for this exciting presentation in room 144C of the Walter E. Washington convention center. Hosted by the Museum, Arts and Humanities Division.
From left: Linda Stoddart (United Nations), Richard Hulser (Library Consultant), Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) and Cindy Hill (Hill Information Consulting Group)
I found it interesting that the first question asked at a session on the Library of the Future was about "info pros," not librarians. Times are changing and terms are being used that are not always clear to everyone... So what else is new? =)
Dan Clancy, engineering director at Google Book Search, will be the featured speaker at the SLA Public Policy Update. The Google Book Settlement is a hot topic right now, so you'll want to hear Dan speak about the settlement components. If you have questions about the settlement and its implications, now is the time to get some answers.
This session will take place from 11:30am-1:00pm on Tuesday, 16 June, in room 143AB of the convention center.
Steve Weiss (right) from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), and Eliza Robertson and Phillip Barron from the National Humanities Center (NHC) discussed the digitization and transcription of the 862 half-hour episodes of the popular weekly radio show "Soundings." The project, a collaborative effort between UNC-CH, NHC and the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), goes live later this year. The panel on "Collaboration for Digital Preservation" was organized by the Museums, Arts, and Humanities Division.
When I left the opening session of the SLA conference yesterday, I left inspired. The event opened with a series of awards that recognize professionals in various fields for the numerous contributions. Prefacing each award, there was a "trailer" where interviews and other information on each award winner was displayed on the ball room's large monitors. As a new member to SLA, I found this especially useful as it introduced me to many new people. Not only that, these video presentations benefited from some high quality production work. The award presentations exceeded my expectations and energized me about the profession.
The opening keynote address by Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, struck a counterpoint to the awards. While Powell did not speak about librarians directly, I still found the speech quite interesting. He covered everything from his many pursuits, his views on leadership and his efforts to modernize the U.S. State Department. His speech also showed that it is althogether possible to deliver a very good speech without PowerPoint or any other visual aids.
A growing number of people at the conference are using Twitter. The use of this year's conference tag (#sla2009) has already surpassed the used of the conference tag (#sla2008) last year. We also have a re-tweet facility that was setup by YankeeInCanada (Daniel Lee). So follow @sla2009 to get tweets from people who are using our hashtag (#sla2009).
Above is a flat screen display in the ProQuest-Dialog booth that is showing tweets from the conference, including tweets that are using the #slait hashtag. Thanks to ProQuest-Dialog for helping to promote the use of Twitter at this conference.
A history of the Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division will be presented on Tuesday, 9:30am-11:00am, in room 201 in the convention center.
Speakers for this session include Dorothy McGarry, David Stern, Michael Fosmire, and Brenda Corbin. Come hear stories about this division and meet with fellow division members.
Elizabeth Joffrion (right) shared her knowledge of the projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities at the panel on "Funding for the Future: Preserving the Past," organized by the Museums, Arts, and Humanities Division. The other speakers at the panel were Rachel L. Frick (Institute of Museum and Library Services) and Kathleen M. Williams (National Historical Publications & Records Commission).
Jane Kinney Meyers (left) was awarded a one-year SLA membership for her poster "Lubuto: Excellent Special Libraries for African Street Children" at the Poster session & open house of the Social Science, Museum, Arts & Humanities, and Education Divisions. The open house attendees, who chose the winner by voting with chips, also selected two runners-up: Jacy Bell ("Information Accessibility and the Disability Community") and Cheryl Klimaszewski ("Putting a Face on the Information Divide: A Look at Two Romanian Villages").
Each Fall, SLA members submit abstracts to the Contributed Papers Selection Committee. This year we received over 40 abstracts, 9 of which were selected to be presented at the conference.
These sessions are a great opportunity to hear from your peers -- what are they working on? What are best practices? Trends in the field? 3 papers are presented at each session, so it's a great chance to hear a little bit about each project.
First session is Monday at 3:30 in room 141. Check out the full schedule.
Washington, DC has beautiful architecture, so as you roam around the city, remember to look at the buildings. Check out both new and old structures, and especially old churches. You may be surprised and the architectural elements that you'll see.
By the way, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. is a Carnegie Library building. Admission to its library and exhibits are free and open to the public.
Wondering what the future of SLA looks like? It was on display at the first-timers' reception Sunday afternoon. More than a hundred young information professionals ate finger food, swapped business cards, made new friends, and chatted with longtime SLA members for nearly two hours.
Conversations ranged from the casual ("Oh, a friend of mine used to work at the Justice Department") to the curious ("What do you think of the Google book settlement?") to the controversial ("My friends at public libraries don't agree with me about this, but they're looking at it too narrowly"). But one common thread ran through all of them--a longing to connect, to be with other information professionals and learn from and share with them. By the end of the reception, the purple "First Timer" ribbons they were wearing had become status symbols.
What does our future look like? It's all around us ...
In celebration of our 20th anniversary, the Environment & Resource Management Division will be presenting some green entertainment. So...Monday at around lunchtime, you may see a juggler strolling about near the entrance to the INFO EXPO, or perhaps near the Registration area. We all get enough pens, post-its, candies and what have you...but there's never too much fun! Come by and smile.
SLA Tech Zones, sponsored by Dow Jones & Company, offer hands-on training in a few different technology areas. This year, the course topics are podcasting, taxonomy and SharePoint, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
There are still tickets available ($35) for the following courses. Visit the SLA Registration Center to purchase a ticket. Classes are held in convention center room 204C.
Monday:
7:00am-8:30am: Podcasting--Make Noise the New-Fashioned Way (#625)
1:30pm-3:00pm: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007--Beyond the Bulleted List (#655)
3:30pm-5:00pm: Taxonomy and SharePoint--A Powerful Combination (#660)
Tuesday:
7:30am-9:00am: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007--Beyond the Bulleted List (#755)
9:30am-11:00am: Podcasting--Make Noise the New-Fashioned Way (#765)
11:30am-1:00pm: Taxonomy and SharePoint--A Powerful Combination (#805)
1:30pm-3:00pm: Microsoft PowerPoint 2007--Beyond the Bulleted List (#825)
Wednesday:
8:30am-10:00am: Podcasting--Make Noise the New-Fashioned Way (#910)
Welcome to the SLA Blog! This site will bring you useful information about the global information profession and about SLA.
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