– Awards winners information is posted on behalf of the Awards Committee (Anna Burke, chair, Maureen Festa and Juliane Schneider). Below is Anna's speech from the Annual Business Meeting on 12/7/2010 about the winners.

 SLA Boston Award Winners

 Gauri Govil

Gauri joined and became active in SLA Boston early in 2010. She took over responsibility of posting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to keep information up to date and relevant. She also volunteered at the Centennial Celebration registration desk and added a section for Volunteer Opportunities on the wiki. Gauri identifies a need and takes the initiative to solve it! She’s also very personable.

So, thank you Gauri for all of your work to improve chapter communications this year!

 Centennial Committee

I believe this is the first year an entire committee was nominated for an award. They were nominated multiple times, and they absolutely deserve it. I am, of course, talking about the Centennial Committee. Here are their nominations:

The Committee certainly did “outstanding committee work” having taken full responsibility for all aspects of the Centennial event planning. The venue was wonderful, the food delicious, the agenda worked really well, the chapter history was fascinating, the amount of vendor support quite amazing, and the member attendance was high. It was truly a significant event in the history of the Boston chapter, and the committee, who worked for over a year, certainly are “chapter achievers”!

The second nomination was for the 6 long-standing members on the Centennial Committee: Dee Magnoni, Jean Scanlan, Ruth Seidman, Hope Tillman, Ethel Salonen, and Ellen Cartledge. Each of their contributions (Jean for the state proclamations, Ruth for the history, Hope for overall coordination, Dee for vendor support, Ellen for information from CT, Ethel for the Past Presidents dinner) made the event a successful celebration for our chapter anniversary. All of them have helped SLA Boston grow into a successful, strong chapter.

Centenntial Committee members:

Hope Tillman, Chair, Dee Magnoni, Jean Scanlan, Ethel Salonen, Ruth Seidman, Ellen Cartledge, Sidney McNab

Ethel also spoke about how integral Hope’s contributions were…and Anna mentioned just how long she’d been working on Centennial related information/programming – since somewhere around 2007-2008.

 Nancy Burt

There is one other member of the Centennial Committee, but since she received another nomination for another aspect of her chapter work this year, I’m singling her out: Nancy Burt.

In addition to her hard work with the Centennial Committee, Nancy received a nomination for chapter programming. Here’s what her nominator had to say:

I’d like to nominate Nancy Burt for her outstanding work on program development. The sheer number and diverse program topics are unparalleled for the Boston chapter.

Nancy’s collaborative focus for the chapter has made great strides in reaching out to offer programs in NH, RI, Maine and more.

Nancy has organized programs reaching out to current members and retired members. As President-Elect for the SLA Boston chapter, Nancy has raised the bar on program offerings.

Nancy, thank you for all you’ve done for SLA Boston!

New Officers

Congratulations to our new officers! Khalilah Gambrell is SLA Boston’s new President-elect. Gauri Govil is the new Director of Communications. Unfortunatelly, Bob Risko resigned as Treasurer, however Matthew Burt will be filling in for the year.

Here is the slate of SLA Boston’s executive board officers for 2011

President — Nancy Burt

President Elect — Khalilah Gambrell

Past-President — Kristen Liberman

Secretary — Beth Giana

Treasurer — Matthew Burt

Director, Communications — Gauri Govil        

Director, Strategic Planning — Paula Cohen      

See you in 2011!

I hope you’ll spend some of your valueable time with SLA Boston colleagues. Don’t miss these opportunities to strengthen your professional network and participate in important Chapter activities:

• Dine around on November 18th at Squealing Pig, near Simmons College. Starts around 5pm. Register here.

• Learn more about the SLA Boston Diversity Scholarship at a Coffee and Ice Cream social on November 30th at JP Licks in One Brigham Circle. Starts at 6:30pm. Register here.

• Annual Business Meeting on December 7th at Jasper White’s Summer Shack. Starts at 5:30pm. Register here.

And there are other chapter activies of note:

Nominations are still open for chapter awards. For more information, please see the previous blog post.

Did you notice the new section on our website? There’s now a section for Volunteer Opportunities Check it out!

The SLA Boston group on LinkedIn is growing. Join now and start a discussion!

The SLA Boston Awards Committee is once again seeking nominations of chapter members for any one or more of the three following Awards, to be presented during the Annual Business meeting at the end of this calendar year:

The Chapter Achievement Award recognizes a chapter member for outstanding committee work, performance in office, or execution of event-related duties, during this particular program year.

The Distinguished Service Award recognizes a chapter member for a sustained record of supporting chapter activities over the years. These may be for service on one or more committees, by holding various offices, or for managing different events, that when considered cumulatively have notably furthered the life of the chapter.

The Special Recognition Award is conferred on longstanding chapter members as they cap their careers, and approach a well-deserved retirement, in recognition of what they have done or meant to the chapter.

Any member may nominate another member. The nominations need not be overly formal in tone, but should give enough detail to allow the members of the Awards committee to make a reasonably fair comparison among nominees. For more information and a list of past award winners, please see http://wiki.sla.org/display/SLABOS/Past+Awards. Award recipients will be announced at the Annual Business Meeting.

Please have nominations to the committee by November 26th.

Committee Chair: Anna Burke, anna.e.burke^atgmail.com

Committee Member: Maureen Festa, mefesta^atgmail.com

Committee Member: Juliane Schneider, juliane.schneider^atgmail.com

If your library doesn't currently have a strategic plan or you want to improve your existing plan, this workshop is for you!

Register today: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/strategicplanworkshop

Pack your management toolkit with Developing an Effective Strategic Plan for Your Library, being held on Friday, October 22, 2010, from 1:30pm-5pm at the offices of Pierce Atwood in Portland, ME.

In this workshop. Cindy Sullivan, Principal of CSullivan Strategic Information Management, LLC, provides best practices training on the 11 elements of a successful strategic plan. Participants are divided into teams and through 10 interactive activities, they will learn to develop a plan for their organization. Topics include: four reasons to develop a strategic plan, 11 crucial plan elements, and tools and techniques for developing a plan. So, bring your mission statements and prepare to have a fun afternoon of informal learning with your colleagues.

Cost is $40 for SLA members, $50 for non-members and $30 for students/retired/in between jobs.

Registration deadline is October 1.

The dine-around following the workshop will be at David's near the Pierce Atwood offices, from 5:30-7:00pm.

Friday is the last day to register for our Centennial celebration. Register today! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bsla100

On Tuesday, September 28, 2010, the chapter will celebrate our 100th anniversary and launch its exciting future for members in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Join us at 2 p.m. for an open chapter board meeting.

At 3:30 p.m. there will be a lively member-partner discussion on maximizing the vendor/customer relationship. Partners attending include Basch Subscriptions, CRCnetBase, Dialog, Dow Jones, EBSCOhost, IEEE, InfoCurrent, Infotrieve, LexisNexis, and Thomas Reuters. 

At 5:00 p.m. will be Exhibit time, a chance to meet our partner sponsors and see what's new and exciting. Cocktails will be served within the exhibits.

At 6:30 dinner will be served, and following that will be the centennial program featuring remarks from Anne Caputo, President, SLA, and Janice Lachance, CEO, SLA.

It should be a wonderful afternoon and evening. For additional information about the event, check out the Centennial website: http://units.sla.org/chapter/cbos/index.html

Let's look forward together!

Register now for this exciting program being held on Friday, August 13, 2010, from 9am-1pm at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua, conveniently located off Route 3.

This informative program will cover some of the ins and outs of the ever-changing site license process. Representatives from British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, and Springer will answer your questions about site licensing.

Cost of the program is $25 for SLA members, $35 for non-members and $15 for those who are retired, students, or between jobs. Breakfast and lunch are included!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y69RPLB

Registration deadline is August 6th.

SLA RI and SLA Boston are pleased to announce a joint gathering on Saturday, July 31st at the 6:05pm Pawtucket Red Sox

 game at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

This is a family-friendly event, open to members and non-members alike! The more, the merrier!

David Stern, candidate for SLA President-Elect, will also be joining us. This is a great opportunity meet and talk with him, find out first hand what's going on in the organization, and let him know your thoughts and ideas.

We're ordering tickets soon, so act fast to get the group discount. Tickets requested before July 21st are only $6 per adult and $4 per child. Parking is FREE!

Register for tickets here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZSCDR22