Happy Holidays Everyone!

Last night was a historic night as the Chapter voted overwhelmingly to change its name from SLA Boston to SLA New England at the 2011 Annual Business Meeting held at the Calderwood Pavilion in Boston. The vote was passed by a majority of members who attended in-person and online.  The revised bylaws have been submitted to the Bylaws Committee and once signed and returned, the name change will be official!  We are very appreciative to Past President Nancy Burt for leading the chapter through the name change.

Awards

Several members were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the chapter.

Khalilah Gambrell received the Special Recognition Award for her contributions to the chapter and breadth of programming this year.

Ann Cullen and Mary Chitty received the Distinguished Service Award given to “an individual who has, consistently over the years, given her time and efforts to ensure the continuing success of the Chapter.”

Devon McArdle and Roger Magnus were honored with the Chapter Achievement Award - given to “an individual who has done an outstanding job in his committee assignment(s) this year.”

Thank you all for your commitment and dedication to SLA New England.

2012 Slate of Officers 

Congratulations to our new officers for 2012: Devon McArdle, President Elect and Matt Burt, Treasurer.

Here is the slate of SLA New England’s Executive Board officers for 2012

President – Khalilah Gambrell

President Elect – Devon McArdle

Past-President – Nancy Burt

Secretary — Beth Giana

Treasurer — Matthew Burt

Director, Communications — Gauri Govil        

Director, Strategic Planning — Paula Cohen      

Strategic Plan Draft

The Strategic Plan draft is available for all members to review. Please send comments to Paula Cohen, SLA Boston Strategic Planning Director (Paulacohen00@gmail.com) by December 31^st.  The official plan will be presented to members by March 15^th. We appreciate the efforts of the Strategic Planning committee.

Passing Gavel

The Annual Business Meeting concluded with the passing of the gavel as Khalilah Gambrell assumed the position of SLA New England Chapter President.  Khalilah’s remarks focused on the three C’s that will outline her presidency: Communicate, Collaborate, and Commit.  She asked members to help her:

• Communicate who we are within the chapter and beyond by empowering members with skills to articulate the value of the profession within and outside their organizations and job positions
• Collaborate by building bridges that connect all members
• Commit in some way (however small or big) to sharing knowledge with each other

If members can Communicate, Collaborate, and Commit then 2012 will be a fun and exciting year for SLA New England.

Khalilah will provide more details about ways to Communicate, Collaborate, Commit in the next couple of weeks. Entire text of her remarks are available online.  

Overall, it was an exciting and historic Annual Business Meeting.

Congratulations to all award winners and 2012 Executive Board.

The following post was written by Candice Kortkamp. She studies cataloging, metadata, and research methodology at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Librarians and information professionals possess highly transferable skills that are applicable to a wide range of workplace environments. As traditional roles are rapidly being replaced with new titles and responsibilities, it can be challenging to know where to begin a job search. Though they may be looking for candidates that have the skills that librarians offer, organizations and institutions often do not use “traditional” library and information terminology in their job descriptions.

The Special Libraries Association, Boston Chapter had this in mind when it presented the 2011 “Hidden Career Opportunities for Librarians and Information Professionals” event featuring a panel of information professionals in non-traditional careers.

The following is a recap of what the professional panelists suggest for taking advantage of hidden career opportunities in non-traditional library fields:

Apply for Jobs You Appear to be Unqualified For

Matt Johnson works as Senior Program Manager for Taxonomy and Information Standards in the eServices division of EMC Corporation. His favorite aspect of his current position is having a hand in custom metadata management. But most of what he does he learned on the job. For this reason, coupled with the knowledge that most employers are novices at writing job descriptions, Johnson emphasizes that there is value in applying for jobs you appear to be unqualified for. “Be honest about your limitations, but know what you have to offer,” he says. “If you see yourself fitting into that role, think of someone else seeing you in that role”

Know Your Worth

Librarians are “trained to recognize relevant information, analyze it, package it, and deliver it,” says Paula Maloney whose current position as an Executive Search Sourcer for Global Talent Acquisition, EMC Corporation, allows her to implement the sleuthing talents she attributes to sound discipline learned in library school.

Don’t Worry if “Librarian” isn’t in the Title

This piece of advice, received from a professor at Simmons College, pushed Eve Marie Miller to search for jobs beyond traditional librarian positions. She now works as Director of Collection Development at EBSCO Publishing where she is assisting with the transition associated with the H.W. Wilson acquisition. Miller recommends following the S.M.A.R.T. acronym for resume writing, strategically updating each resume you send out to reflect specific skills and measurable accomplishments.

Be prepared for EVERY opportunity

Some people call this “Networking.” Others may advise putting together an “Elevator speech.” Maureen Festa simply encourages, “Know your strengths; know what you love to do,” and be prepared to communicate this knowledge in unexpected situations. Festa began her career in reference at BPL’s Kirstein Business Library, where she decided that she loved doing research. She advises dressing well and carrying business cards to every event you attend – this is how she landed her current job as Development Research Analyst at the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Boston University. She now applies her passion for information seeking toward conducting prospect research.

Get certified

Panelist Laurie Rotman has been with Draper Laboratory since pre-World Wide Web days when she worked on developing the company intranet. Though she says it was far from anything she ever thought she’d be interested in, she loves that her position in Information Resources and Management affords her the “opportunity to take risks and try new things.” She highly recommends Project Management Institute (PMI) Certification for library and information professionals to learn new skills, get involved in a network, and expand opportunities.

The following post is Brandy King’s account of the September 21^st Fall Kickoff Reception.  Brandy runs her own business as an on-call librarian and is the chair-elect of SLA’s Social Science Division.

Every June at the SLA conference, I attend the Boston Chapter meetup. I have fantastic conversations,
remember how much I love hanging out with this crowd, vow to see them more often, and then promptly forget about professional networking for two months while I soak up the Summer. So I always look forward to the chance to finally meet up again with my SLA Boston colleagues at the Fall Kickoff event! 

This year, 35 chapter members attended the event which was held at Scholar’s, an awesome bistro with two floors, billiards, and absolutely delicious arancini rice balls. Toby Pearlstein, Liz Peoples, Catherine Boothby, John Aubrey, and Nancy Burt took to the pool tables while a group of SLA @ Simmons students worked on their entries for the treasure hunt competition. Old friends got the chance to catch up on Summer happenings while others took advantage of the networking to talk about job opportunities and collaboration.

        
At the end of the night, three winners were rewarded with treasure for their efforts in the trivia competition:

• Stefanie Maclin won 2 tickets to the SLA Boston Annual Business Meeting on December 8^th
• Kris Liberman won a $25 Amazon gift card from PubGet
• Matt Burt won a $25 American Express gift card from LexisNexis

 Many thanks to President-Elect Khalilah Gambrell, who took the lead on planning yet another fun and successful program for our chapter. To see what else is in store, check out the Upcoming Events section of the website and save the dates!

The following post is Paula Cohen's account of the August 11th Idea Exchange program. Paula Cohen is SLA Boston's Director of Strategic Planning.

Idea Exchange, a SLA Boston program held August 11th, was a collaborative exercise that allowed attendees to discuss a challenge/issue in small groups and present ideas/solutions to all attendees. The program was graciously hosted by Dee Magnoni, Library/Knowledge Lab Director of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Library, past president of SLA Boston, and current chair of Leadership and Management Division.  We also had the pleasure of SLA President-Elect Candidates, David Cappoli and Deb Hunt’s attendance as the two joined the collaborative discussion, offering excellent insights and perspectives to all groups.

We were all asked to come to the program with one question as a discussion topic. In all, the topics sorted into 4 main categories: Professional development, Value of the profession in relation to Information Overload, Retirement – transition concerns, and Vendor/Publisher fluidity and Budget concerns.

As the program announcement promised, the format was an experiential and engaging dialogue among attendees.  The forum provided an opportunity for participants to converse with peers about challenges and/or issues they’re facing and to learn best practices, ideas, and solutions to overcome them.

I joined the “Professional Development” group where our discussion centered on a group member’s dilemma – her role as an Information Specialist, a role she has held for seven years, was expanding and evolving toward a new area.  This brought up common threads we’ve been hearing about and many of us face around coping with change, learning new of skills and software, and new expectations.  While this new direction set off a strong current of trepidation, all of us in the group concurred that she was headed in the right direction, and will be acquiring highly marketable skills. The program was a great opportunity and safe forum for her to air her concerns. We achieved the mission and more with the attendee leaving satisfied, with a positive perspective to carry to her work.   

The capstone of each topic discussion involved summarizing the key points. Examples from the Retirement and Value of the Profession groups:

Retirement group takeaways:

• Have a transition plan
• Disseminate critical information to team and others
• Place key staff in leadership roles
• Mentoring and grooming staff for leadership roles is very important

Value of Profession takeaways:

• Information professionals can position themselves as experts to help contend with information overload
• Find out about your non-users; seek opportunities to outreach to this group to convert them to users.
• Understand the process of how your users use information
• Assist with information needs being conscious of individual characteristics and behavior
• Informal communications are very effective
• Meet them (end users) where they are

As always with events like these, the time seemed to evaporate too quickly.  Let’s encourage Khalilah to think of the August 11^th event as the first in a series.

Following the program, Dee guided us on a tour of the innovative and exciting Olin Library, offering us a glimpse into a unique academic experience at Olin.

Pictures from the event will be posted shortly. 

Let’s continue the idea exchange online. Do these issues/concerns echo similarly to yours? What ideas/solutions do you have that address these issues/concerns? We look forward to your comments on LinkedIn or to the blog post.

Last night’s holiday party/business meeting was a lot of fun. It was *fantastic* to see everyone there! The Asgard was a great venue – good space, great food, fantastic staff. The only downside? No mic. My throat is still a bit sore from having to shout the entire business meeting so people could hear me…hahah. Shouting above the Irish punk rock playing in the bar was no small feat, but we all got through it and it made for a short, straight-to-the-point meeting – much to people’s delight.

I promised that I would post my thoughts from the year instead of shouting myself hoarse and making people sit there through 5 million thank yous – all of which are much deserved and worth repeating. I warn you, this is a long post.

On to business…

Our Sponsor: First, I would like to thank Dow Jones again for their generous sponsorship of the event, especially during these uncertain economic times. We sincerely appreciate their continued support of SLA and SLA Boston. Without our wonderful vendors, we wouldn’t be able to provide such important programs and events for our members. To Peter Ryttel and Scott Garland: thank you very much for joining us last night! It was great to have you there and, from what little I saw on table toward the end of the night, it looked like a lot of people stopped by to at least say hello.

The year in review…
This past year we had an incredible number of programs and events.

• We heard from both Mary Lee Kennedy and Stephen Abram about innovation in the early part of the year. We learned how we all as librarians and information professionals need to be innovative in our workplaces, with using technology, and with how we can rely on/encourage SLA to support us as innovators.
• We heard from our innovative colleagues at Fidelity on the tools they were using to connect with their non-librarian colleagues.
• In New Hampshire, we learned how to have successful negotiations when purchasing content thanks to Buzzy Basch, Toby Pearlstein, Rich Burke, and Bob Lucic.
• In Maine, Heather McCann, Jessica Baumgart & Ben Sawyer (Digital Mills / Games for Health) shared technology tools and showed us how emerging technologies are creating opportunities for non-entertainment gaming applications in business.
• In Western Mass Les Campbell shared information about the Quabbin Reservoir and his wonderful photography. It was a breathtaking presentation.
• We had a picnic along the Connecticut River in Northfield and dine arounds in the North End, Deerfield, Cambridge, and of course in Boston with SLA President Elect Gloria Zamora, where she shared some of what’s happening in the Association.
• The kick off party at Tia’s in Boston was a great time – a beautiful night to be on the waterfront!