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.