Professional Development News
by Dee Magnoni, President-elect, Boston Chapter SLA
 dianna.magnoni@olin.edu

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Spring will be an active time for the chapter, as we present many programs around the region. Please check out my programming column for details. Professional development opportunities such as our Copyright Class with Lolly Gasaway or our Practical Taxonomy session should be great picks.

Our chapter is spread over a large geographic area, and I’d like to emphasize some of the virtual professional development that is available to each of us. SLA has continued to roll out relevant virtual seminars. Olin College has hosted a number of these sessions, and will continue to do so throughout the spring. Do you have good space in another region of the chapter? Are you interested in hosting a seminar? Please feel free to contact me for with questions. The chapter can do some cost sharing to get these seminars out to our various regions. Check out the SLA virtual seminars page at: http://www.sla.org/content/learn/learnmore/distance/2005virtsem/index.cfm.

Within the next several months SLA will launch its Online University. There are several partners already in place, and members will be able to access learning modules with library and information-specific topics, as well as a variety of business and management topics. Choices will range from short learning sessions to degree opportunities. As a chapter we will have the opportunity to develop modules of our own that we can then contribute to the university. Stay tuned for more news!

In our fall newsletter I pointed out a couple of our vendor partners and their initiatives with the professional development of information professionals. Check out Dialog’s Quantum2 newsletters at: http://quantum.dialog.com/newsletter/. Upcoming web classes include a series of sessions on Justifying Value. The topic of the month in the February newsletter is Mapping Information Flows: A Practical Guide. Sign up for this and other Dialog newsletters at: http://www.dialog.com/contacts/mailinglists/.

Factiva is the other vendor partner who has stepped up to the professional development plate with their Factiva InfoPro Resource Center. SLA’s competencies for information professionals are highlighted here, and a series of ten guides are available which provide tools, examples and readings on specific development topics. A series of white papers and presentations are also available. Check out the current content and sign up for a newsletter at: http://www.factiva.com/infopro/resource.asp.

A Canadian partnership, The Education Institute, offers a number of learning opportunities. The audio and online courses can be found at: http://www.thepartnership.ca/cgi-bin/site/showPage.cgi?page=education/index.html. We’ll be trying out the Innovation Ideas & Insights class with Wendy Beecham on March 2^nd at Olin College. Let me know if you are interested in joining us!

Finally, here is a link for the academics in our group. ACRL, a division of ALA, has a series of e-learning opportunities available. You can check them out at: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/elearning.htm.

Have a great spring!
Dee

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