SLA Contact:
Doug Newcomb
Phone: 703.647.4923
dnewcomb@sla.org
Voting for SLA Board of Directors Reaches New High;
Brent Mai is 2011 President-Elect
Alexandria, Virginia, 30 September 2010 - The 2010 election for the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) drew a record turnout, as more than 27 percent of members helped elect five new members to the organization's governing body.
When the polls closed at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on 29 September, the election results were announced, as follows:
- President-Elect: Brent Mai
- Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect: Ulla de Stricker
- Division Cabinet Chair-Elect: Richard Huffine
- Directors: Jill Hurst-Wahl and Sara Tompson
The five newly elected board members will begin their terms on the SLA Board of Directors on 1 January 2011 and will participate in their first board meeting during the association's annual Leadership Summit later that month in Washington, D.C.
Of 9,400 SLA members eligible to vote, 27.27 percent (2,563) did so. That percentage represents a new high for the Board of Directors election, topping the previous mark of 26.79 percent set in the 2009 election.
Biographies of the new board members follow:
Brent Mai
Brent is the university librarian and director of the Center for Volga German Studies at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. Before leading the library team at Concordia, he was director of the Walker Management Library of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University and the instruction librarian of the Krannert Management Library at Purdue University. As a corporate information specialist, he worked for Brown & Root (now KBR) in Houston and Bell Northern Research (now NorTel) in Dallas.
Brent previously served on the SLA Board of Directors (2003-2006) and was co-chair of the 2007 Annual Conference Committee and a member of the Annual Conference Committees for the 2005 and 2006 conferences. He has served on the association's Finance Committee (1999-2003), the executive board of the Business & Finance Division (1997-2002), on the Strategic Planning Committee for the Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition Division, and an the Publications Committee for the Engineering Division. At the chapter level, he served for four years as the treasurer of the Indiana Chapter and was a member of the Local Planning Group for the 1998 Annual Conference.
Brent holds an MLIS from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in international finance and economics from George Washington University. He is completing a doctorate in education at the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.
Ulla de Stricker
Ulla is president of de Stricker Associates, a consultancy based in Toronto, Canada, that provides strategic planning for special libraries and assists with projects dealing with information and knowledge management. Prior to establishing her practice in 1992, she held senior positions in the information industry at several organizations, including the Canadian office of DIALOG and at Carswell, a Canadian legal publishing unit of Thomson.
Ulla has been involved in SLA since the early 1980s, serving as president of the Toronto Chapter and chair of the Leadership and Management Division as well as on several SLA committees. She regularly gives talks on resumes and career planning and reviews individual resumes for anyone requesting it (no matter what his or her location). An independent business owner, Ulla served on the board of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (2008-2010) and received AIIP's Sue Rugge Memorial Award in 2009 for her support to colleagues.
Richard Huffine
Richard is a third-generation librarian and currently serves as the national library coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. He has been active in SLA since 2004, when he became the founding chair of the Government Information Division, which focuses on networking and professional development for information professionals who manage and use government information as critical elements of their work. Richard has served on SLA's Public Policy Advisory Council since 2007 and has been an active member of the Environment and Resource Management Division, the Information Technology Division, and the Knowledge Management Division.
In his personal life, Richard supports public libraries in the District of Columbia. As president of the Friends of the Mount Pleasant Library and treasurer of the Federation of Friends of the D.C. Public Library, he helps coordinate library support and advocacy across the city. Richard was president of the federation from 2005 to 2009 and he is currently president-elect of the District of Columbia Library Association (DCLA).
Jill Hurst-Wahl
Jill is president of her own consulting firm, Hurst Associates, Ltd., where she works directly with information professionals and their organizations. She previously was a corporate librarian for two organizations, Corning Inc. and Manning & Napier, and since 2001 has been teaching at Syracuse University, where she is now an assistant professor of practice in the university's School of Information Studies.
Jill is a member of SLA's Information Outlook Advisory Council and has chaired the Second Life Workgroup (2008) and the Association Networking Committee (2001-2003). In the Upstate New York Chapter, Jill has held several positions, including business manager, president (1998-1999), archivist, and chapter liaison to the Syracuse University student group. Jill is currently a member of the Information Technology Division, the Leadership & Management Division, and the Baseball Caucus and serves the IT Division as its professional development chair.
Sara Tompson
Sara is associate dean for library public service at the University of Southern California., where she previously served as the Science & Engineering Library team leader. She also performs research consulting for an engineering firm started by some of her former colleagues. Prior to coming to USC, Sara worked for several organizations, including Packer Engineering, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Illinois Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center.
Sara joined SLA in 1990 has held a variety of association offices, including Engineering Division chair, president and secretary of the Illinois Chapter, and secretary of the Physics/Astronomy/Mathematics Division. She is currently the professional development chair for the Southern California Chapter. She has written articles for Information Outlook about competencies, systems thinking, and marketing and won the H.W. Wilson Award in 2003 (with her co-author, Lorri Zipperer) for the competencies article. She regularly presents guest lectures (both live and virtually) for library courses at UCLA and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, her alma mater.
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About SLA
The Special Libraries Association (SLA) is a nonprofit global organization for innovative information professionals and their strategic partners. SLA serves about 10,000 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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