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.
Oral History Project
The "Voices of SLA: an International Oral History" is an initiative
of the Fellows of SLA in partnership with the SLA Centennial Commission. To
learn more or to volunteer and/or to offer suggestions, go
here.
