President’s Letter
by Hope Tillman, tillman@babson.edu

What a fast year! The chapter leaders have surpassed my expectations on all that has been accomplished this year. This is my opportunity to present some of my thanks. 

To the Board (Dee Magnoni, Liz Bibby, Laurie Allen, Alan Thibeault, and Paul Crosby): Thank you for your responsiveness and willingness to try new things. Laurie has gotten the minutes out in a timely manner, and they are a clear picture of what we have been doing. Alan and Paul have kept our finances in good shape. Al also helped us move into the virtual age with the introduction of PayPal for online payment services. At the last board meeting he did a thorough review of the marketplace competition to PayPal, leading the Board to decide to stay with it for next year. My hat is off to Dee for her help this year. And a special thanks to Liz Bibby, who saw to it that we passed our Chapter Practices Document.  

To the Committee Chairs and their committee members for their accomplishments: 

Archives: Pauline Leeds undertook a major review of our Archives. She also provided the board with a very helpful list of what we should and shouldn’t be sending to the archives.  

Awards: Anthony Stankus and his committee selected some excellent recipients for this year’s awards. 

Bulletin: Content Editor Deanna Briggs and Production Editor Vicki Law brought us excellent issues of the bulletin. Since last spring they have had a “meet a special library” column in the bulletin. 

Communities of Practice: Millie Gonzalez took on the chapter Community of Practice so that we could see how we could use this technology. With Program Chair Dee Magnoni, she spearheaded a virtual course, free to chapter members, helping us learn how to use this community-building tool. 

Discussion List: Bob Moore took on the discussion list when I stepped into this role, and we now have over 500 members on the list. 

Employment: Claire Burday has helped link our members with employment opportunities. 110 job opportunities were posted to the Chapter’s email list and web-based Job Index. She also fielded questions from employers and prospective candidates concerning postings. She initiated the Unemployed Members Sponsorship Fund this year, for the Chapter to pay the dues for two of our members between jobs.  

Membership: Tom Clark actively pursued the goal of member recruitment and retention, keeping track of new members and those whose memberships have lapsed. He enthusiastically welcomed them to our midst. I appreciated his regular reports keeping me up-to-date on membership. 

Program Committee: Dee Magnoni and the Program Committee have planned a lot of excellent programs, both in Boston and all around our chapter from Maine to Mt. Holyoke to Woods Hole. The photos on the Programs and Events page of the chapter web site (http://www.sla.org/chapter/cbos/events.htm#photos) show some of the highlights. There will be a slide show of pictures for the Annual Business Meeting.  The Logistics Committee, led by Jessica Baumgart and Linda Wolf, worked with us as we tried new practices, bringing in PayPal to make payments easier for program attendees and Survey Monkey for program registration. Our regional chairs have brought us excellent programs. Thanks to Kami Bedard (Maine Region Chair), Nancy Stafford (Southern Region Chair), Dorothy Barr and Katherine Deliso (Western Region Co-chairs), and Buzzy Basch (NH and VT Region). We also hosted several of the SLA virtual seminars. 

Minority Scholarship: Thanks to Danielle Barney and her committee for their selection of this year’s scholarship winner.  

Student Relations: Under Mary Condon’s guidance the Student Relations Committee had a very active year. In addition to the very successful Day on the Job program, Mary’s committee selected the student to receive our chapter stipend to attend the Annual Conference in Toronto. During the year Mary attended a Simmons student chapter meeting to get to know Simmons students and promote the Chapter and the Day on the Job.  She also coordinated with the student group so that they received notice of chapter events. The Simmons student chapter of SLA has sponsored a few career nights this year, and several Boston SLA members have participated as panelists. 

Webmaster: David Ware has done a great job keeping our website up-to-date and managing the PayPal webpages. 

Young Professionals: Anna Burke and Stephanie White got this new committee off to a great start. Their major meeting for the year was the “Working with Vendors” Benefits and Barriers” program. That program had to be rescheduled once because of inclement weather, but when it was held, it was very successful. 

And my last thank you to all the chapter members who participated virtually or face to face in programs, on the community of practice, wiki, and discussion list. 

As I have said in past column, SLA is an excellent training ground to help each of us grow. Our Chapter is here to enhance your professional growth through programs and other networking opportunities. Please send Dee and Tom your ideas and thoughts on what we should be doing next. And I know that Dee and Tom will also welcome additional volunteers. 

Thanks for the opportunity to serve as your chapter president again. I hope to see many of you in Toronto at the Annual Conference.  Under the leadership of Dee Magnoni and the incoming Board, I expect the coming year to be a vital and exciting one.  

Hope

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