SLA is now accepting proposals for papers to be presented at the 2014 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO, to be held 8-10 June in Vancouver. Paper topics should be related to library science, information management, or other issues pertaining to client service, technology, or administration in special libraries. Paper topics should be relevant to the conference theme, Beyond Borders, and special consideration will be given to topics that address one of the three daily themes: Embedded Information Services, Digital Content and Big Data, and Leadership in the Human Age.

A panel of SLA members will conduct a blind review of the proposals, and the strongest proposals will be selected for development into papers. Proposals will be evaluated on the strength of the ideas, quality of the writing, potential member interest, and relevancy to the conference theme.

Proposed papers must also meet these requirements:

• At least one author must be a member of SLA.
• At least one author must commit to presenting the paper at the 2014 Annual Conference.
• The proposal must be submitted by 6 December 2013.
• The paper must not have been published in, or submitted to, any other publication or conference planning group.
• The author (and any co-authors) must sign a copyright assignment form that permits SLA to use the paper in various formats.

Deadlines are as follows:

6 December 2013: Applicants submit their proposals in abstract form. Abstracts should be single-spaced Word documents (or plain text) between 250 and 300 words in length, or roughly one page in 12-point type.

13 January 2014: Applicants are notified of the review panel’s decisions, and those with the strongest proposals are invited to develop them into full papers.

2 May 2014: Authors submit their papers and signed copyright assignment forms.

8-10 June 2014: Authors deliver 15-minute presentations of their papers during 90-minute sessions.

To learn more, read the contributed papers presented at SLA 2013 or contact Stacey Greenwell at staceyg@email.uky.edu.

The post Got Research? Share It at SLA 2014! appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Last month, information professionals from around the world gathered in San Diego to network with peers, learn from industry leaders, and meet with vendors to test drive the latest products and services. Some of them came for an additional reason–to present papers that addressed topics such as those in the paragraph above. These “contributed papers” were presented in dedicated conference sessions, with four papers delivered on each day of the conference.

The papers are now posted in the SLA 2013 Annual Conference online planner. Links to the papers are published below; the papers are organized according to the dates on which they were presented. The topic descriptions are excerpted from the papers themselves.

Sunday, June 9

Comparing the Indexing of Cited Journals to Identify the Premier Database for a Specific Discipline
Giovanna Badia
“In research-intensive academic institutions, libraries often subscribe to more than one database to cover any given discipline. While databases overlap, they also often contain unique content and features that differentiate them from their competitors. From these databases, can we identify the premier database in a field?”

Determining Value: Using Rank to Identify Library Characteristics that Contribute to the Bottom Line
Margaret Carroll
“Pressure to be a performing asset impacts a library the same as any division in a for-profit organization. Yet there remains little agreement as to best practices for delivering library value. A study was undertaken to learn which library characteristics relate to its parent organization’s net profitability. For the study, a research design was developed using rank to operationalize relative measures of value.”

Outgoogling Google: Connecting Your Users to Content through a Single Search
John Coll
“For many libraries, Google remains the key challenge and indeed threat for the continued delivery of services. Attempts to downplay or criticize the reliability of this search tool have generally proved fruitless. The desire to route enquiries through libraries are, the author argues, a pointless and backward step that misunderstands the new paradigm for information retrieval. This paper outlines how the National Library of Scotland has taken a very different approach to information provision and, rather than encouraging users to make use of intermediaries such as librarians, instead positions the Google type interface as the principal means to enable relevant content to be delivered to the user.”

Social Media and Citation Metrics
Lisa Galloway and Anne Rauh
“Assessing the impact of a scholar’s work can be measured by several factors, including the number of peer-reviewed publications, citations to these publications, and the influence of the publications. These metrics take a relatively long time to accumulate, [and] they do not tell the entire story. As scholars communicate more frequently and more meaningfully with social media tools, the important of quantifying these interactions is evident.”

Monday, June 10

After the Storm: Establishing Library and Information Services from a Temporary Location
Hildy Dworkin
“The McMillan Library provides services to the New York City Human Resources Administration [and is] located at the agency’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan. HRA’s building was badly damaged during Superstorm Sandy. It was unclear when the building would reopen. In this paper I describe our experience in re-establishing services to a large population without access to our equipment and files.”

Peeking Over Cubicles: An Ethnographic Approach to Knowledge Management
William Cook
“Knowledge audits are the first and most critical step of any knowledge management initiative. In the literature, surveys and interviews are the standard method for conducting knowledge audits. Moving away from the traditional, this paper argues the effectiveness of a holistic ethnography, specifically participant observation.”

There’s an Elephant in the Room, but Your Staff Isn’t: Connecting and Collaborating with Your Off-Shore Team
Helen Poot and Bill Patterson
“How do you build a team from a distance, particularly when team members come with different cultures, perspectives and objectives? How do you ensure high quality, timely responses across time zones and geography? Over the past five years, I’ve had the opportunity to create and manage both captive and outsourced research teams, both in India. In this paper, I’d like to share some of the practices [that] worked.”

Using Mobile Technologies to Connect Face to Face
Louise Verma
“Librarianship has been undergoing a transformation away from simply connecting people to collections and is increasingly moving toward connecting people with each other. David Weinberger at Harvard University advocates this in his ‘library as platform’ manifesto. Weinberger urges libraries to start thinking of themselves as part of the infrastructure rather than simply a portal that users go through. With these thoughts in mind, the question becomes: How can a small special library be a conduit for connecting its diverse and often siloed user communities?”

Tuesday, June 11

Beyond the Repository: Rethinking Data Services at the University of Maryland
Robin Dasler, Trevor Munoz, Karl Nilsen, and Sarah Hovde
“In recent years, academic libraries have become increasingly concerned with data management and data curation. When asked by campus administration to help develop support for data management and data-driven research on campus, librarians from the University of Maryland consciously sought to develop active, perhaps even interventionist, approaches to data. This paper describes both the benefits and the challenges encountered during the development of a ‘business case’ for the research data services program.”

Modern Tools Solve Ancient Riddle
Cindy Romaine
“This paper demonstrates how to use the ‘connect, collaborate, strategize’ model to the fullest, as we describe how information professionals solved a classic information overload problem. The client, ICANN, now offers users a Web portal that pulls data from nearly 100 sources, combines and filters the information, and outputs the results into logical streams.”

A New Approach to Needs Assessment and Communication to Connect and Collaborate with Faculty
Cindy Elliott, Jim Martin, Mary Feeney, and Ricardo Andrade
“In 2010, the [University of Arizona] Libraries began to look at its organizational structure. The Research Services Team (RST) was formed. The highest priority work for the team is two-way communication with UA instructional and research units and the assessment of their needs, as these inform all of the libraries’ other services.”

Supporting NIH Grantees through a Collaboration between the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library, the University of Michigan Medical School Office of Research and the University of Michigan Office of Research and Sponsored Projects
Merle Rosenzweig and Bethany Harris
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest provider of funds for medical research in the world. Since the University of Michigan Medical School receives a substantial amount of grant funding from NIH each fiscal year, the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library has built a strong collaboration with units at the University of Michigan that are instrumental in working with NIH grantees to manage all aspects of the grant process. This paper describes this collaboration.”

The post SLA 2013 Contributed Papers Now Online appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

This Feedback Pack is an outgrowth of our Conference Re-Envisioning Task Force, which is well on its way to make recommendations that will continue making the SLA Conference the most engaging and invigorating annual event in our field.  Since our conference is the main source of revenue for our association, it is imperative that it not only meets, but exceeds our member needs and expectations.  This task force, charged with determining short and long term trends in conferencing, is taking a holistic look at six vital areas: member engagement strategies; content levels and subject matter coordination; logistics in geography, duration and frequency; vendor engagement and improving efficiencies; international outreach; and online virtual conferencing extension opportunities.

What keeps me coming back to our annual conference year after year is the opportunity to make connections with others in our profession who, like me, care about customer service, about improved access to information, and about facilitating connections within and outside our home organizations.  For my conference dollar, SLA provides incredible value and lessons I can bring back and implement in my daily work.  This year, a first time attendee remarked at the quality and variety of our sessions, “not the same old re-hashing of topics” they had experienced in other venues.  Our conference sessions are relevant to what I do on a day-to-day basis and bring fresh ideas to help solve challenges we all experience in providing services to our customers.

I’m proud of our conference, but I know we can do better and attract more attendees, whether it is strategic location selection, changing conference session timelines, or adding a virtual component for the most popular sessions to be re-presented as webinars.  Wouldn’t that give us a bigger bang for our conference dollar (not to mention help with session decision management)?  Additionally, by providing the best sessions in virtually, it will also offer the Association an opportunity to provide the highest quality content to members who could not afford to attend the entire conference in person.

If you have thoughts on improving our Annual Conference, please send your ideas (if you didn’t attend, tell them why) to the Conference Re-Envisoning Task Force at slacrtf@gmail.com.  As a candidate for President-Elect, it is important for me to find ways to get our members actively involved in chapter, division or association activities such as the Feedback Pack, virtual conference planning, or arranging chapter happy hours. Considering sharing your thoughts with me on how to make your experiences with SLA more vibrant at leslie.reynolds@colorado.edu, Twitter (@leslier), or on LinkedIn.  I look forward to hearing from you!

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The Experts Are In at SLA 2013!

Photos from the SLA 2013 Annual Conference are now available for digital download.

If you like what is already posted to SLA’s Facebook Page, there are many, many more for you to browse and download for safe-keeping.

Follow the instructions below and let me know of any questions.

1. Visit www.thephotogroup.com
2. In the top right box, enter access code: sla2013
3. Browse photos based on event title on the left-hand side
4. When you see photos you like, select either:
   • ‘Download’ – this is for downloading individual photos
   • ‘Lightbox’ – this allows you to continue browsing and store photos for later download all at once (like an Add to Cart feature)
     • When you want to download your Lightbox as a zip folder, select download under any photo, and within the new dialog box, select ‘Your Lightbox’ rather than ‘image’
       • You can also download an entire category using this same dialog box
5. You can download either Web or Print Quality for any photo. The Print Quality is a very large file size.

Important: if publishing any of these photos to your blog, Website, newsletter, or any other medium, please credit The Photo Group as follows:

(c) The Photo Group, 2013

Enjoy!

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The post #SLAtalk Roundup! Building on Lessons Learned at SLA 2013 appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Be sure to attend the Town Hall Meeting today.  SLA CEO Janice Lachance and SLA President Deb Hunt will host an informal dialogue on matters of importance to the association and its members.  Help us make SLA more responsive to your needs! 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., CC 3

Today’s Career Connection events include the seminar Make the Most of a Difficult Situation: Solutions to Get You Through. Join presenter Jill Hurst-Wahl for discussion and advice for those workplace challenges (10:00 a.m – 11:30 a.m.).  The workshop Preparing for an Interview offers do’s and don’ts for meeting with prospective employers (2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.).  Career Connection sessions are sponsored by TRAK Records and Library. Both sessions are in CC 11A. 

If you are a unit webmaster or a member of the Webmasters Section of the IT Division, meet up with your colleagues to share best practices for using WordPress.  SLA Chief Technology Officer Quan Logan and Daniel Lee will be on hand to answer questions and share tips and strategies.  Bring your laptop!  2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., CC 1A

Deb Hunt and David Grossman will be signing copies of The Librarian’s Skill Book: 51 Essential Career Skills for Information Professionals today.  Meet them from 12:00 p.m. – 12:45 p.m. in the Social Media Lounge.  Copies of the book will be available for sale.

The Annual Business and Membership Meeting will take place at 4:00 p.m. in CC 6B.  SLA CEO Janice Lachance will deliver the annual state of the association presentation, and SLA President Deb Hunt and SLA Treasurer John DiGilio will also be on hand to update members.

The meeting is followed by Connect, Collaborate, Strategize, a panel session featuring leading info pros discussing and debating popular topics.  Panelists are Kevin Adams, Alexander Feng, Tracy Z. Maleeff, James Manasco, and Moy McIntosh.  Session will be moderated by SLA Past President Donna Scheeder.  5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., CC 6B

The INFO-EXPO is open 9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. today. Don’t forget to use your voucher (full conference registrants only) for lunch during the INFO-EXPO Networking Lunch (12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.).  Vouchers may be used to purchase food from the vendors at the back of the exhibit hall.  The grand prize announcement will take place at 1:55 p.m. in the Giveaway Pavilion in the INFO-EXPO.

Please remember to buy your Wednesday tour tickets by 4:00 p.m. today.  Registration closes at 4:00 p.m.  If you are looking for a ticket for a sold-out tour, check the bulletin board to see if anyone is trying to sell theirs.

The luggage check will again be available today from 7:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Check out today’s sessions and events using the online conference planner.

The post Tuesday SLA 2013 Highlights appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

If you weren’t in San Diego, we don’t want you to miss out on this crucial knowledge.

Our twitter chat on Tuesday, June 18th will be a great time to refresh what you learned and discuss how you will put it to work–as well as hear what you missed at the sessions you wanted to attend but just didn’t have time for.

When:

Tuesday, June 18th, 17:30 UTC (1:30 PM eastern / 10:30 AM pacific)*

*Our 2nd (evening) session is on hold due to lack of interest

Questions to answer:

1. Share the most inspiring, actionable ideas you heard while at the conference – as many as you can think of in 15 minutes.

-first 20 minutes

2. What are some new things you plan to incorporate into your career strategies or at your organization? How will you convince your colleagues the new ideas are worth the time?

-second 20 minutes

3. What topics would you like to see in future SLA conferences?

-last 20 minutes

In the spirit of organization:

Tweet your answers according to the schedule above. Answer question one from 1:30 – 1:50 and so on.

New here?

Check out our latest #SLAtalk posts, including how to #SLAtalk, and the YouTube video: The Why and How of #SLAtalk.

Following the session:

Stay tuned to the SLA Blog where we’ll post a collection of great answers, as well as the link to all the tweets from the session. Notice your tweet being favorited from @SLAhq? You’ll probably be featured in our round-up.

The post #SLAtalk: Building on Lessons Learned at #SLA2013 appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Be sure to stop by the SLA Hot Topic Session on Becoming a Decision Enabler: Practical Insights and Strategies. This interactive panel discussion will focus on actionable ways to measure and improve the value of information services. Get recent examples of how information services are benefiting leading organizations globally. Sponsored by the Financial Times.  12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m., CC 10

Learn how to attract and evaluate perfect candidates in Tips and Tricks for Hiring Managers, an SLA Career Connection Workshop. Sponsored by TRAK Records and Library. 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., CC Room 11B

Bring your questions and Meet the Candidates for the 2014 SLA Board of Directors. 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m., INFO-EXPO, Giveaway Pavilion.

Meet Patrick Lambe, author of Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness, in the Social Media Lounge, where he’ll be signing copies of his book (also for sale) from 2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Enjoy refreshments and check in with exhibitors during the INFO-EXPO Networking Reception. Sponsored by Springer. 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Leaders and all other attendees are invited to the Leadership Orientation, which will focus on the topic of membership. Phil Blair, the CEO of Manpower, is the featured speaker. 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Marriott, Marina Ballroom, Salons D & E

The Leadership Orientation is followed by the Chapter and Division Cabinet Meetings (6:00 p.m. – 6:45 p.m.), and then the Joint Cabinet Meeting (6:45 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.).  All members are welcome to take part in these meetings. The Chapter Cabinet Meeting takes place in the Marriott Marina Ballroom, Salons D & E, and the Division Cabinet Meeting takes place in the Marriott Cardiff/Carlsbad Room. The joint meeting will be held in the Marina Ballroom, Salons D & E.

Don’t forget to consult the online conference planner for information about all conference sessions and events!

The post Monday at SLA 2013 appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Here are a few highlights of the day’s activities:

Sunday General Session and Awards Presentation: Join us as we honor our 2013 award recipients and outstanding conference partners before our featured speaker, Mike Walsh, takes the stage. Mike’s advisory work and keynote presentations provide unique insights into the growing influence of new markets on breakthrough innovation and business transformation. Read more about Mike in the May/June issue of Information Outlook. Session is sponsored by Springer.  9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., CC 6AB

Certificate in Copyright Management instructor and lawyer Lesley Ellen Harris will be conducting free confidential copyright consultations for attendees during the Ask the Copyright Expert session. Bring Lesley your vexing copyright questions. She’ll be in the Social Media Lounge in the registration area, so stop by and sign up for a time slot. 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Looking for a new position? Then you’ll want to attend these SLA Career Connection sessions: Managing Your Job Search Process (11:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.) and Your Resume as a Marketing Tool: Make It Count! (1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.) Find your ideal career match! Both sessions take place in the convention center, Room 11B.  Sponsored by TRAK Records and Library.

The SLA Membership Committee wants to hear from you!  The committee will hold an open Q & A session from 4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. at Basic, 410 10th Avenue.

At 11:15 a.m., be sure to come to the INFO-EXPO Grand Opening to see if you’ve won a Kindle Fire (submit your name for the drawing; you must be present to win). Visit with exhibitors to find out about their latest products, services, and solutions. On Sunday, the INFO-EXPO is open from 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Network, enjoy refreshments, and chat with exhibitors during the INFO-EXPO Opening Reception. 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.  Sponsored by Factiva and Springer.

Check your luggage today from 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Find conference updates at the Information Booth each day, and follow along with the events on Twitter (@sla2013).  Don’t forget to use the hashtag #sla2013 when you tweet!

And don’t forget to use the online conference planner to plan your daily schedule.  A mobile version is also available.

The post Sunday’s Conference Highlights appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Session handouts and other presentation materials that we have received from conference speakers are now posted in the online planner. Print handouts before you travel to San Diego, or use the wi-fi at the convention center to access the files from your laptop or mobile device during the programs.

To access the handouts, go to the conference planner and find the session that you’re interested in.  Available presentations are posted as links in the session record.

If you are a speaker and did not submit your presentation through the speaker resource center by the deadline, please send the file to Jarell Grady at jgrady@sla.org and we’ll post it as soon as we can.

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