Rebecca B. Vargha, Candidate for President-Elect
Hello everyone,
I am delighted to be here with you this afternoon. My sincere thanks to the Nominating Committee chaired by Carol Ginsberg and to the SLA Board of Directors for placing my name on our ballot as a candidate for President-Elect.
It is a privilege to discuss my views on the future of SLA. If you ask our members about the primary benefit of SLA membership, the majority will respond that networking is the number one benefit. From a membership perspective, let’s examine the strength, unity, culture and influence of our organization. It is our network of people who make SLA powerful.
To illustrate my point, how many of you are familiar with the Masai tribe who lived in Kenya? **[Audience raises hands] My youngest son is studying Africa this year in his middle school social studies class. Last week at home, he and I were discussing the leadership model of the Masai. Their culture was fascinating and everyone owned the water rights collectively. They had a common cause.
As you can see, this stick alone is easily broken. **[Holding single stick in air and breaking loudly] By taking this bundle of sticks together, they are virtually unbreakable. **[Holds bundle of sticks in air] As an organization, we have a common cause and shared values. We have collective influence like the Masai and part of our culture is providing professional development and lifelong learning for our membership. We all have unique issues but
together we are stronger.
With a creative blend of tools, we have on-demand educational opportunities. Our timing is right since the American Society for Training and Development estimates that 74% of the U.S. Workforce will need re-training by 2010. I have been thinking about our professional development offerings lately and here is a draft tagline for our program: “SLA : the learning organization that changes everything in your career.”
Our organization helps us deal with the unpredictable, loss of a job, mergers and acquisitions, the economy and change in general. I have been an active SLA member for twenty-five years working in a variety of settings: non-profit (think tank enviornment), corporate (set up an information center for a software company) and working for Nortel Networks in a company information center. In 2001, there were 68 of us working at Nortel and we were distributed globally. Life in telecommunications was very good and we worked on virtual teams. As you may recall the telecommunications sector collapsed and in one fell swoop we were “right-sized,” which is Nortel speak for being downsized or made redundant. The company was fair about the process. In Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, there were 18 information professionals who banded together to help each other out in true SLA fashion.
We collaborated, communicated and made connections. On a weekly basis, we had strategy session, practice interviews, and resume reviews, usually over coffee at each other’s homes. In fact, when one of our group had an interview, we helped with her childcare issue by taking care of her preschooler. This is my personal tangible example of the power of SLA. Within 8 months, everyone was working again in the information field. One person re-invented herself in the field of real estate. We all transferred our skill sets to other environments.
In my case, I accepted a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the School of Information and Library as their librarian. The graduate students have nicknamed me the “uber-librarian.” Speaking of changes, we have a new dean, Jose-Marie Griffiths. She has a $1 million grant from IMLS to fund a workforce study for the next two years. There are many stakeholders and collaborative partners including SLA. The announcement about this grant was made at the the SLA Open House last October. I am on the project team for the next five months and am specifically looking at salaries for information professionals in corporate and academic settings. This grant is an excellent example of collaboration as a community. A tangible outcome of this study is a plan to survey 12,000 special libraries, so that is one survey for each of our members!
The project is a wonderful opportunity to design the future collectively as a group. A community takes effort to sustain and as an organization with clear values and beliefs we can move forward. Here is a list of my personal SLA values:
• We are committed to the success of SLA and each other (i.e. Nortel example).
• We are responsible for our own well-being and career path.
• We speak positively of our colleagues and treat them with dignity.
• Our communications are clear, direct and honest.
• We recognize diversity as a strength which is appreciated.
• We build trust as leaders.
As your President-Elect what I bring to our table are these skill sets:
• Build consensus and deliver results.
• Establish trust.
• Turn ideas into reality.
• Doing the right thing for our organization.
• Leading from the heart with a passion for SLA.
Thank you.
Note: ** indicates visual portions of the presentation.
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