SLA New England is pleased to announce a $1500 stipend available to a current MLS student in the New England area.

SLA New England Student Travel Stipend Award Criteria

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Be currently enrolled as a degree candidate at an ALA-accredited academic program in Library and Information Science in New England.
• Be a first time attendee of an SLA conference.
• Be a current member of SLA and of the SLA’s New England Chapter.

APPLICATION PROCESS:
Submit a document containing the following information/elements:

• Full name.
• Academic affiliation: Institution and Program.
• Date of start of program; number of semesters and courses completed as of December 2011; and anticipated date of graduation.
• Contact information, including mailing address, telephone, and email.
• Other SLA division awards, if any, for which you are applying.
• An essay of no more than 750 words (see details below). The essay should be double-spaced.

Submissions will be judged on the basis of originality and clarity as well as on inclusion of all required information. Neatness, spelling, grammar, and completion of all required information will count in judging.

ESSAY DESCRIPTION:
Write an essay of up to 750 words on one of the following two topics:

1. The conference theme this year is “Practicing Agility in an Open World Economy.”  What does this mean to you in the context of being an information professional?
2. Why would attending this conference be beneficial to you in your transition from student to information professional?

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION SUBMISSION:
Sunday, April 15th, 2012

APPLICATION PROCESS:
Applications should be emailed as a single file attachment in Microsoft Word to Wendy Austin, SLA New England Student Relations Committee Co-Chair, at the following email address: waustin@draper.com.
Please contact Wendy with questions about the application process.

POST AWARD REQUIREMENTS:
1. The Awardee will write a brief article (approximately 1,000 words) on the conference experience for posting on the SLA New England Website (http://newengland.sla.org/).
2. The Awardee must serve a one-year term as the Student Relations Committee Co-Chair of the SLA New England Chapter or, if graduated during the 2012 spring semester, as a member of the Student Relations Committee (the latter may be accomplished virtually, if the recipient is no longer a New England resident following graduation).
3. The Awardee must be a member of SLA and of the SLA’s New England Chapter throughout the one-year board term described above

NOTIFICATION AND AWARD DISTRIBUTION:

• Applicants will receive notification of award status in late April 2012.
• The winners will make their own conference and registration arrangements and will receive prompt reimbursement for travel expenses after the conference by submitting travel receipts to the SLA New England treasurer. The award may be applied to the SLA student conference registration fee, transportation, and lodging costs. Meals and incidental expenses are not covered.

SLA 2012 Call for Posters: “Jumping over the Candlestick: Individual and Institutional Efforts to Be Nimble and Quick in an Interconnected World”

The Academic; Education; Museums, Arts, & Humanities; and Social Science Divisions of SLA invite proposals for a poster session to be held during the divisions’ joint open house at SLA 2012 in Chicago. The theme for this year’s poster session is “Jumping over the Candlestick: Individual and Institutional Efforts to Be Nimble and Quick in an Interconnected World.”

Proposals should focus on the ways information professionals and/or their institutions are staying agile in today’s open world economy. Case studies, research, and innovative ideas for the future are all welcome.

The poster session will be a relaxed and informal time to share ideas with your colleagues. We welcome proposals from any SLA member, new or experienced, and especially from students. A prize will be awarded for the best poster, as judged by attendees.

Proposals should be submitted by April 15, 2012 via e-mail to tmurray@stamps.org. Please include a title and description of about 250 words, and your name, institution, e-mail address, and address. Proposals will be reviewed by a committee for relevance to the theme and quality, and applicants will be notified of the decision by May 1, 2012.

The Poster Session and Joint Open House will be held on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 from 7-9 p.m.

The 2012 poster session committee is Barbara Kern (Academic Division), Maya Kucij (Education Division), Tara Murray (Social Science Division), and Cameron Trowbridge (Museum, Arts, & Humanities Division).

Recently, during one of SLA Boston’s events we asked SLA members if they have words of wisdom for folks attending SLA Annual and we received a great response. Following are the wise tips that we received from our members:

• You’ll get as much out of the conference as you put into it. For example, if you don’t like the session you’re in, yet you make no effort to change sessions, you’re going to miss a potentially great opportunity to improve your experience.    Attend anything that is even remotely interesting, whether you think it’s directly applicable to your current position. Talk to everyone and don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to total strangers, ask about their jobs, etc. We’re all librarians. We’re all friendly, right?

• Pace yourself and plan ahead of time as to programs and people you want to network with.  Follow-up is key to getting lasting benefits from the conference.

• Rest up beforehand and don’t be afraid to leave a session that isn’t holding your attention.

• Bring & exchange lots of business cards.

• If a session is not interesting, move on to something new.

• Use the scheduler to plan your time accordingly and attend the Open Houses to network and to learn more about divisions.

• Have confidence; don’t be afraid to talk with everyone. As per experience, most folks are very approachable. If you are looking for a position; have a elevator pitch – a sentence or two that describes what you want to do and why.

• Make time for networking events, wear comfortable shoes, dress in layers AND Hydrate!

Finally, a BIG thanks to all those who provided the above tips.

Khalilah Gambrell, President-elect attended the SLA Leadership Summit earlier this year. Here are her thoughts and notes from the summit.

This year’s Leadership Summit was held January 19-22, 2011. The main theme of this year’s summit was the SLA President, Cindy Romaine’s platform – “Are you Future Ready.”

Future Ready, is an attitude to be more flexible, confident, and positive… “to focus on where the puck is going.” It is time to anticipate how managing or communicating information change and how we need to be aware of the impact in meeting the needs of our patrons, clients, or students. One cannot become Future Ready alone, it takes a community and thus the Future Ready 365 blog (http://futureready365.sla.org/). The blog’s objective is to have a member post each day.

Challenge to the SLA Boston Chapter: I would like to be a part of the chapter that has the most members who post to Future Ready 365. If you are interested in posting, go to (http://futureready365.sla.org/join-us) and if you are interested in collaborating on a post please send a note to slaboston at gmail.com and we will try to match you up with someone.

The following represent key notes from the meeting:

Communication

• SLA.org will be redesigned sometime this year
• SLA Chapters/Divisions/Caucus have the choice to move to WordPress platform
• SLA Boston – will move to the WordPress platform this year
• James King – will work as a consultant with one SLA Chapter not yet determined

Programming

• Increase Chapter/Division/Caucus collaboration with respect to initiatives and programs
• Partner with other library associations and other professional organizations
• Virtual programming has been fairly successful tools for other SLA Chapters
• Look at vendors as programming partners; work with them on developing programming and give them information as to what are the benefits of this partnership

Building/Retaining Members

• Call current members and thank them
• Call former members and inquire as their reasons for not remaining members
• Continue to engage with members not just at the beginning of the membership
• Conduct surveys that give you an accurate picture of your members and their needs
• Developing a strategic plan that is helps with long range planning and is also flexible enough for short range planning

Annual Conference

• At the Annual Conference, a day long session will be held for Philadelphia employers, as an opportunity for employers to learn more about our profession and value.
• The Annual Conference – is critical to the financial standing of SLA.
• Question for the Chapter – How do we encourage and increase SLA Annual Conference attendance?

What was learned at this summit we hope to incorporate into 2011 SLA programming , membership retention, communication, collaborative efforts, and beyond. We also hope to hear from members as to how they become “future ready” and how we as a chapter can become so too. In addition, we hope to hear from members as to what we can do to bring value to the profession and SLA. I hope to see many of you at the March 30th Heather Hedden talk.

Khalilah, SLA Boston President – Elect

Are you heading to the annual conference in New Orleans?  There was enthusiasm at the recent pre-SLA conference dine-around for a NOLA Boston Meetup. Here are the details:

Rebirth Brass Band: http://www.rebirthbrassband.com/
- one of the most popular (and high energy) New Orleans Jazz/Second line acts performing at
mapleleafbar.com
8316 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 866-9359

If we want an earlier meetup nearby for those who are hungry and not as compelled to dance right next door to the Maple Leaf is a must-eat: Jacque-Imo's (http://www.jacquesimoscafe.com/)
8324 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
504-861-0886

We can plan on taxi-ing over together from the conference center (or from the French Quarter for those staying in that block of hotels). There will be a steady stream of taxi's returning from Oak Street, which has become a hopping night-spot away from the touristy strip.

We'll use Twitter and LinkedIn to stay connected at the conference! If you haven't already, join the SLA Boston Group on LinkedIn.

Hope to see you there!

While President-elect Nancy Burt gets set up to blog, CommDir Heather added this post for her.

The day
started off with Jill Strand who talked about The Ambassador Model: Growing a
Grass Roots Effort. She described what an ambassador is:

• Passionate about the topic
• Utilizes multiple tools
• Is committed to positive dialog
• Engages people and encourage to
  explore all available information

And what it
is NOT

• a brand ambassador
• a set agenda or a side
• more interested in being heard
  than understood
• would rather be right than win
• takes constructive concerns
  personally

The challenges of being an ambassador are energy, staying positive, knowing when to disengage, resisting the urge to take comments personally, identifying where people are ‘at’ while keeping dialog on key issues. There are ethics ambassadors, for information ethics, and share info with PR advisory and info ethics councils,
took part in the Ethics summit at Seattle. And there are alignment ambassadors who should share alignment findings, respond to questions and concerns and share feedback with SLA leadership. (Side note: Hope Tillman is the SLA Boston Alignment ambassador)

Success means
a clear job descriptions and goals, training, time, brainstorm tools for
feedback, encourage members to communicate their thoughts directly. Ambassadors
should be used judiciously, stress need for constructive criticism, be used when
grass roots is needed, support diplomacy in ALL communication, take temperature
of audience throughout the process.

The next session for Day 2 was about Chapter planning highlights. There were so many ideas that I couldn’t capture them all! Here’s a selection:

Minnesota ideas – A new board position ‘Chapter intelligence chair”. A program they called pickacreature. Folks get together, bring 15 slides, everyone gets a few minutes to talk about something that you’re passionate about.

Philadelphia idea – a wine & cheese social
event with silent auction for fundraising

European Chapter – annual winter warmer pop quiz, a summer soiree, an annual breakfast
at london online expo

Mary Ellen
Bates then presented cool division programs. These are programs planned for the
annual conference in New Orleans.
These are spotlight sessions to be virtualized (subsidized by SLA)

1. Your
personal brand & social media: using social media tools to promote and
develop your personal and professional brand. Evolving role of informational
professional.

2. Knowledge
continuity and opportunities — Patrick Lamb Taxonomy and organizational
effectiveness. km professionals, effective implementation of KM.

3. Brand You
and Web 2.0 — how info pros make use of social networks to build their
professional repuation, share expertise, establish credibility,

4. Tenure,
how to get it and what it does for your career. A panel discussion — what does
tenure mean, balance day to day with process.

5.
Negotiating Up – achieving your goals with internal clients — strategies and
tools for working with internal clients and negotiating with senior leadership,
managing relationships.

6. Emerging
technologies, realtime search — Legal division user content in social media is
a rich mine of data, realtime information access, real time information
management

7. Science
of hot sauce — speaker who previously worked with Tabasco hot sauce

8. Ask CI
experts panel — recent developments, Q&A, discussion of attendee-raised
questions

9. CI
transitions for LIS pros – successful transitioners, what recruiter/HR are
looking for

10.
Negotiating content purchase — nuts and bolts of contract mgmt, contract
negotiation preparedness, change mgmt.

There will be
volunteering opportunities at the NOLA conference for half a day or a day for
Katrina relief.

Next came
the tidal wave of program planning information. I want to put the information
from these sessions on the wiki, rather than here on the blog. The first
section was Hands On Experience 1  –
Attract and retain members. It was a panel discussion with Leigh Hallinby NY;
Christina de Castell, Clare Lysnes (TOR) ; Gayle Gossen moderating. The second
section, Hands On Experience 2 – Merging chapters and new divisions. Discussion
included experiences from the Central PA and

Philadelphia
chapters merging and the combining of the Michigan chapters. The Academic division and
Taxonomy divisions were examples about how a division is formed and the challenges
they faced.

The last
part of the day were the chapter and division cabinets session and a joint
sessions. Here’s my quick notes:

approved
agenda

approved
minutes

remarks from
the chair

trend –
difficulty finding new leaders in the chapter, how to mentor and train; most
are joining with other chapters, a lot with websites 95% with job. New member
packet or out reach program.

Pilot
project – webex to brainstorm topics to draw more members to leadership roles.

Actions at
Board of Directors included:

• 
  Accepted 2010 budget for the association
  
• Approved dissolution of inclusion caucus
  
• Several caucuses reapproved
  
  
• no deferred
  items

Chapter
assessment task force is looking at how chapters might be restructured

Webex/communication
resources for geographically disparate groups We currently pay for
telecommunication by the minute — there are other resources that HQ will tell
us about

Graphical
representation about where all chapters are — working on it, don’t know cost,
more to come

Merging or
restructuring — there is a process in place

Questions at
the Joint meeting — drupal installation, working on it but lost web developer
trying to find someone who can help out, wordpress platform? Stephen Abrams talked
about awards rising stars and fellows and there was a reminder that the Diversity
leadership award deadline is Feb 15^th

Overall it
was a jammed packed 2 days! I hope to make the most of what I learned, and look
forward to the Annual Conference in New Orleans!

While President-elect Nancy Burt gets set up to blog, CommDir Heather added this post for her.

As the new
president-elect, this was my first leadership summit. What follows is a summary
of the notes I took, and my perspective on the different presentations during
day 1 of the summit.

Janice Lachance
started the day off talking about leadership as a choice and Lagniappe, or giving a little
bit extra. She also highlighted the benefits of membership. I plan on having a
webex session to remind SLA Boston members what’s available to them, rather
than listing everything here.

Next, Anne
Caputo talked about Creating the Future — 5 Global Trends knowledge
professionals should understand. We are a tribe that is (or should work towards
being) people positive, interesting, inventive and persistent. She advised that
change is constant, flexibility matters and attitude is everything. Here is my
summary of her global trends:

We live in a
Globalized world, interconnected with personal networks and sites, facebook,
multimedia formats, and digital word of mouth.

This is a
time of Distressed markets, including the housing bubble, bank solvency,
stock market, unemployment and underemployment.

We live with
Disintermediation, defined as cutting out the middleman or elimination
of intermediaries in the supply chain. There is a lack of recognition of what
we do, and a rise of the individual. Millennials are invading, and who are they
anyway? Is it a state of mind, digital natives, people who are always
connected, multi-task and think 'all information is good?' Millennials live
virtually, and are setting the digital trends. Four recommendations for the
intelligent enterprise:

• flow of information
• information governance
• improve quality of customer
  insights
• use accurate and timely data
  from all part of the organization

We live with
Disruptive technologies, innovations that improve a product or services
in the way that the market does not expect.

Competition is growing. Who are they? Everyone.
They are disruptive, self service, efficient. Why are they succeeding? Top 10
things done — use a search to find information, looked up the news, etc. What
is our response?

• Alignment findings– translate
  into practical application and toolkits that we can use; understand our
  role in the world
• Focus on membership — growth,
  retention, differentiating benefits
• Emphasize sustainability –
  financial responsibility, professional civility

A Q&A
session followed with these take-aways:

• Be a good communicator—it’s key
  to getting the information out
• Take risks
• Look at the CEO corner periodically—Janice
  Lechance’s presentations are there
• It’s not possible to over communicate
  – must not stop
• Take advantage of the First 5
  years task force. They’re creating tools, and can also be applicable to job
  changers, retirees and unemployeed.
• Don't pigeon hole members, tools
  can be used by all, but perhaps with different emphasis. For example,
  retirees mean an organization loses institutional knowledge; the unemployed
  may take advantage of the career center, recently changed dues structure.

After Anne
spoke, Maura Kennedy & Cara Schatz presented the Alignment Project Next
steps: Communicating change.

1. New mission, vision core values:
   There will be work this year to update the SLA mission and vision statements and core values including: leadership, accountability & results, service, continuous learning, knowledge sharing and collaboration.

2. Action you can take now is a series
   of tips for all members

3. Working to create a uniform
   visual identity and common language guidelines for chapters and divisions
   to support our shared identity and common messaging

4. Working to create common
   templates, with branding guidelines, provide guidance about use of logo
   and tag line, news releases, and boilerplate text, basic speech for
   external audience, website and blogs, newsletters and bulletins.

5. Alignment project hopes to work
   with leadership on all steps. They’ve heard from us that we’re overloaded
   with information but also feel not gotten all the information. We need to
   find a balance, and the local leadership needs to relay the information to
   membership.

We also had
a round table discussion about how to roll out alignment project efforts to
members and communicate from HQ? What would work best?

A favorite
part of the session was the keynote speaker, Jim Kane. He talked about building
and maintaining loyal relationships. Jim started off by talking about himself,
to develop connections with his audience. The core attribute of leaders is that
they have followers. But how do you create a following?

Emphasis is
on connections or familiarity. I associate with this person (what our brains
do). But why do our brains make connections? Survival: the human race started
in one place, then was able to spread out over 80000 years because we work
together. Working together also supports our survival as an organization –
have to do it together. We had to determine who we could trust and our brains
figured it out.

The relationship
levels, from the bottom up:

• Antagonistic (the bottom, an not
  the ideal place to be)
• Transactional (an exchange)
• Predisposed (too lazy to look
  elsewhere)
• Loyal (top of the pyramid)
  equivalent with love in social life

Looking at
relationships is difficult work and it’s not about satisfaction. How many
relationships are happy that you do your job? Loyalty is a behavior, about the
future, what can/will they do for you? Satisfaction is a mood, about the past, what
did you do for them?

Three things
essential for loyalty are:

• Trust — competency, capacity,
  character, consistency
• Belonging — need to work on and
  largest part going to discuss
• Purpose — vision, fellowship,
  commitment (is s/he going to follow through?)

Jim expanded
on Belonging as:

1. Recognition – 'do you know who I
   am?'
2. Insight
3. Proactivity – we are all
   appointments in someone else's life. What can we do to move past that?
4. Identity – two sides, know who I
   am and find something similar– need to share parts of ourselves with them
5. Inclusion – people like to be
   asked, want to be part of the process and decision making, at least make
   the effort. Amazon and iTunes do this in a virtual world.

The keynote
ended with a brief video about inclusion. He gathered information about
different people in leadership positions at SLA, that were broadcast on the Internet in some form. My take away was no surprise: be careful what you put out there, anyone can find it!

I’ll be
posting Day 2 soon. I welcome any comments or insights you’d like to share!