Cara Schatz
P : 703.647.4917
cara@sla.org
SLA Board of Directors Ready to Innovate in 2008
Leadership Summit in January Serves as Kick Off for a Busy Association Year,
President Abram Outlines Initiatives for 2008
Alexandria, Virginia, 5 March, 2008 - The 2008 SLA Board of Directors hit the ground running at the Louisville Leadership Summit. The three-day meeting was the first meeting of the new association year and is also the first time the new board members elected in 2007 officially joined the sitting board as full voting members. 2008 SLA President Stephen Abram MLS, took office, and challenged the 2008 Board to focus on innovation for the association over the coming year, declaring his theme for the year, "Innovate in 2008."
"SLA has made great strides in recent years, especially with Click University, Annual Conference and Leadership Summit. It was the spirit of innovation that has brought us to where we are today and in order for SLA to promote continuous innovation, SLA members need to be empowered to educate themselves in as many ways as possible," said Abram. "To that end we're launching some new initiatives in 2008 to complement our dynamic and traditional learning opportunities at Annual Conference, SLA Chapter and Division events, and through Click University. SLA needs to continually grow as an advanced learning organization in the best sense of our vision. To me that vision includes all members looking first to SLA as a place to learn and grow both professionally and personally."
President Abram has started some initiatives for 2008:
Director Cindy Romaine is leading a large workgroup of SLA volunteers and staff to build and promote an SLA Innovation Laboratory. This will be on the SLA website and open to every member. President Abram's vision is of a virtual space that will have licensed and free software as well as tutorials for SLA members to invest time in learning the ins-and-outs of leading edge, useful technology and management and leadership skills.
Jill Hurst-Wahl is leading a small workgroup of SLA volunteers to create a play area in Second Life for SLA. President Abram notes that "this is a little 'out there' but it allows us to meet the needs of our members who want to find, indeed invent, the future for special libraries in the 3.0 virtual world environment."
Director Deb Hunt is leading an SLA Learning 2.0 workgroup of SLA volunteers. The goal is to launch an SLA version of the innovative "23 Things 15 minutes-a-day" learning strategy at our annual conference in Seattle. It will be adapted for the needs of specialized information professionals.
"It is essential that we fine tune our value proposition to the upcoming SLA leaders of tomorrow," said Abram. To that end, Gayle Gossen and Christina de Castell are leading the SLA First Five Years workgroup to survey and offer great learning and networking opportunities for new information professionals. "We need to embrace, nurture and listen to info pros who are at the beginning of their careers, they have a lot to teach, even to the most seasoned SLA members."
Addressing the nearly 300 leaders present at the Leadership Summit in Louisville, President Abram also noted that SLA leaders should focus on "reinforcing the wonderful progress SLA has made in developing a modern learning suite of services available exclusively to SLA members." These tools include the eBrary collection of over 1000 management and leadership books, Click University and the "no-cost" Course of The Month, the SLA News Connection Factiva alerts as well as the SLA NewsGator RSS feeds developed specifically for information professionals.
Abram continued, "I could stand up here for another hour listing all the benefits of membership, there is certainly much more available, but this list of learning opportunities is more than enough to prove that there's a ton of value in our SLA memberships. I'd like to cap off 2008 with happy members, more members and members better prepared for the wide range of exciting opportunities available to special librarians and information professionals."
The 2006-2007 SLA Board of Directors, because of the change in the association year in 2005, was in place for an additional six months beyond its regular term. This term extension was enacted in order to align the SLA Board election cycle with the association year of January to December. As a result, the January 2008 SLA Board of Directors meeting was also the first time in 18 months that the board saw a change-over of elected leaders.
The 2008 SLA Board of Directors:
President: Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
President-elect: Gloria Zamora, Fellow and Field Representative to Senator Jeff Bingaman, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Past President: Rebecca B. Vargha, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Treasurer: Sylvia R. James, Sylvia James Consultancy, West Sussex, United Kingdom
Chapter Cabinet Chair: Libby Trudell, Thomson Scientific, Sunnyvale, California
Chapter Cabinet Chair-elect: Susan Fifer Canby, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.
Division Cabinet Chair: Robyn Frank, Robyn Frank Strategic Partners, Fulton, Maryland
Division Cabinet Chair-elect: Tom Rink, Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
Director and Secretary: Kate L. Arnold, NHS Direct, Hampshire, United Kingdom
Director: Deb Hunt, Exploratorium, San Francisco, California
Director: Tamika McCollough, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Director: Cindy Romaine, Portland, Oregon
Director: Roberto Sarmiento Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Director: Ty Webb, InfoWebb Aurora, Colorado
Member: Janice R. Lachance, SLA Chief Executive Officer, Alexandria, Virginia
For more information about SLA's governance practices and leadership, please visit the Board of Directors section of our Website at http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/governance/bodsection/index.cfm.
About SLA
The Special Libraries Association (SLA) is a nonprofit global organization for innovative information professionals and their strategic partners. SLA serves more than 11,000 members in 75 countries in the information profession, including corporate, academic, and government information specialists. SLA promotes and strengthens its members through learning, advocacy, and networking initiatives. For more information, visit us on the Web at www.sla.org.
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