January’s Brown Bag Lunch Topic will be Text Mining, Query Formulation and the role of Information Professionals. The program is co-sponsored by the SLA New England Chapter and SLA Pharmaceutical and Health Technologies Division

Date: Tuesday January 10, 2012
Time: 12 noon-1:30 pm
Place: Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Suite 1100, 75 Kneeland St Boston MA

Directions: http://csdd.tufts.edu/index.php/directions

Cost: Free. Bring your brown bag lunch [or pick something up in Chinatown]. Drinks and cookies sponsored by Linguamatics

Register by Friday January 6th, 2012:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bbl2012Jan

This program will include networking and an informal presentation by Linguamatics on text mining and query formulation. These two topics are of increasing interest and importance to information professionals.  Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to learn more and discuss what you are already doing!

Additionally, a talk at the recent 2011 Gilbane Boston Content Management conference identified “query formulation” as an important skill set in short supply and Dr. Susan LeBeau will talk briefly about her experience hiring in this area.

Text mining has been used for some time in drug discovery and competitive intelligence and can be useful  for:
- Therapeutic Areas and Clinical trials
- Drug Target Identification and Validation
- Biomarker Discovery
- Systems Biology
- Safety/Toxicology
- Pharmacovigilance/Post Marketing Surveillance
- Translational Medicine
- Competitive Intelligence

Contact: Mary Chitty, mchitty(AT SIGN)healthtech.com or Sandra Peters, Sandra.Peters(AT SIGN)tufts.edu

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.

For the Annual Business Meeting, we will offer members unable to attend, the ability to participate via web.

Date: Thursday, December 8th

Time: 6:15pm to 7:30pm

Please register for the web meeting by 4pm on December 8th : https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/368494273

Agenda: The business meeting will begin at 6:15pm, and include several votes (e.g., to approve the 2010 minutes, the 2012 slate of officers, and the bylaws changes). For web meeting participants, we will use the polling feature during the votes to get your responses.

The web meeting will be more like a webinar than a conference call. Web meeting participants may use the chat feature, ‘question’ feature or ‘raise their hand’ if you need to ask a question. The moderator of the meeting will then unmute you if needed.

Note: Our bylaws and chapter practices indicate that the bylaws approval takes place at a business meeting, and requires a 2/3rds majority vote of members attending. This means that there will not be a separate surveymonkey or poll to vote on the Bylaws change.

Matthew Burt is running for a second term as SLA Boston Treasurer.  He has been a Chapter member since 2008.  He is a Simmons GSLIS alum and is currently working at Roome & Guarracino, a structural engineering firm in Somerville, MA.

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.