Welcome to SLA Connections, your source for news and information from the information profession and industry.
On Baltimore, Baseball, and “The Bay”
We are now just about 30 days away from SLA 2006 in Baltimore, or “Charm City” to the locals. For those of you making plans to visit this lovely harbor city for the first time in order to join us for the 97th rendition of SLA’s Annual Conference, you’re in for a treat.
The conference will be loaded with great learning sessions and networking events, and the Info-Expo – the largest information and knowledge management event in North America – is sure to satisfy your thirst for information industry trends and technologies. Our keynote speakers – Gwen Ifill and Walter Mossberg – are sure to entertain and inform you, and set the tone for the rest of the conference. What’s more is that the city you’ll find outside the doors of the Baltimore Convention Center will interest and please you as well.
Baltimore has been enjoying a renaissance over the past twenty years. Formerly a major hub of industry and trade along the eastern seaboard of the United States, it is now a center of finance, commerce, and tourism – without losing its natural roots to some very American qualities.
The first thing you’ll notice is Baltimore’s complete connectedness with the Chesapeake Bay. The Inner Harbor – once nothing more than a broad expanse of shipping ports and loading docks – is a thing of beauty, where shopping, dining, museums, and entertainment options abound. All of this commercial activity is surrounded by modern skyscrapers that serve as home to a wide range of 21st Century corporations.
Of course, proximity to “The Bay” means you’ll be able to savor some of the most wonderful seafood in the world. The locals boast about steamed blue crabs and crab cakes, and you will certainly want to experience them.
A few blocks in any direction lead you to interesting cultural, scientific, and social institutions and attractions. The Enoch Pratt Free Library, The Maryland Science Center, and Camden Yards – home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, are interesting sites that will be just a short walk away. (Unfortunately, the Orioles will not be in town during SLA 2006; but you can tour their facilities and see one of the most beautiful sports facilities in the world).
Just a few blocks from Camden Yards, you’ll find the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum – a tribute to one of Baltimore’s great native sons who was known for his prowess as a baseball player. It’s a clear indication of the love affair Baltimore has with this uniquely American sport.
Take a short taxi ride over to Fell’s Point and you’ll get the feel for Baltimore the seaport town. Cobblestone streets, diverse boutiques and restaurants, and the smell of the salty sea air make it a relaxing getaway from downtown. It’s also accessible by land or water taxi!
Lastly, I would fail miserably in my efforts to lure you to SLA 2006 if I didn’t mention the Little Italy section of Baltimore. There are many great restaurants and shops, plus you can take part in the 102nd Annual Saint Anthony Festival while visiting.
Be sure to let me know what you discover in Baltimore while attending SLA 2006. I’ll see you there!
Janice’s List
Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin, by Pamela Walker Laird (Harvard University Press, 2006). Don’t be fooled. This is NOT a “how-to” guide on successful networking. Rather, it’s a history of strategic relationship building and mentoring in American business. Laird, a professor of history at the University of Colorado at Denver, found that the success rate of people who made their own way through building effective relationships was about 100 percent. Read an interview with the author from CircleofExperts.com or a book report from HBS’s Working Knowledge.
Burning Question
What’s your most effective tactic for successful networking? Is it a question you always ask to break the ice or a 30-second description of you and your career? I’d like to hear from you on this! Email me at janice@sla.org.
Consider This
“The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Jean Giraudoux, French diplomat and novelist, 1882-1944.
Decision-Making and Success
Want to advance your career? Make sure your style of decision-making develops as you do. Read more from Harvard Business Review.
Can a Techie Oust Orrin Hatch?
It’s been 8 years since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in the U.S. Now, one of its chief supporters in the U.S. Senate is being challenged by a…. techie and novice politician??? Read more from Wired or listen to a podcast of the interview.
Focus on Innovation:
Thinking the Unthinkable
How can you encourage your employees to think of drastic innovations? Paul Sloane, an innovation consultant, shares one simple technique that enables small teams to envision entirely new business models. Read more from InnovationTools.com.
Cool Site: www.rollyo.com
Are you tired of wading though thousands of irrelevant search results to get to the information you want? Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, a search engine aggregator powered by Yahoo!, you can easily create your own custom search engines, and explore and save those created by others.
SLA Moves to Create Chapter in China
SLA Chapter Cabinet Chair Patricia Cia has approved the creation of a proposed chapter in China. In doing so, she appointed Stephen Marvin, Business and Social Sciences Librarian at West Chester University outside Philadelphia, as the proposed chapter’s first president. Marvin is very active in developing copyright educational programming in concert with academic institutions in China.
Interested in joining a petition in support of the new chapter? Do it online now.
SLA Activity in China Nothing New
SLA activity in China will likely come as a surprise to many. Yet recent history suggests that members of the SLA community have been working to forge relationships and create new opportunities for interaction there.
- Professor Marcia Zeng, an SLA member at Kent State University, is a member of the Chinese Society of Information Science, consultant to China Society of Indexers, and editor to the Society publication (one the top ranked journals in China). She has received many rewards and honoring appointments from Chinese library professional organizations including Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Chinese Academy of Science.
- Foster Zhang, an SLA member at Stanford University, initialized and organized an annual digital library seminar with Chinese academic libraries. This year, the seminar’s title is “Strategies and Practices in Digital Library Frontier,” and it will be held in Beijing and co-organized with Tsinghua University Library in August.
- Lian Ruan, Head Librarian and Director of International Programs for the Illinois Fire Service Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organized a summer training school for Chinese academic librarians in 2005.
- Professor Jian Qin of the School for Information Studies at Syracuse University is active in advising Peking University Library, China Academy of Science Library, and Ze-jiang University library school with visiting professor/consultant appointments.
- Incoming SLA President-Elect Stephen Abram took the opportunity to meet with hundreds of librarians and promote SLA.
- Stephen Marvin, West Chester University and interim President of the China Chapter, partnered with officials in Jiangxi Province to provide the first Sino – American conference on Copyright hosted by the Jiangxi Copyright Bureau and Jiangxi Normal University.
- SLA staff and members met with 26 business and government officials from China on 1 May. The delegation is seeking to learn how American businesses employ competitive intelligence and share information. SLA members Anne Caputo and Barbie Keiser led the dialogue.
SLA 2006 Conference Blog Now Online
If you were paying attention to last year’s conference activities in Toronto online, you no doubt saw the SLA Web log that shared news, event information, and participant feedback. The excellent response to that blog yielded the second edition for this year’s conference in Baltimore, at www.sla.org/2006conferenceblog. Thanks to Elsevier for supporting this year’s blog!
Member Service Focus:
SLA’s Pacific Northwest Chapter Web Site
In the ongoing quest for cool member services, SLA staff wishes to focus your attention on this new and very cool new Web presence for the Pacific Northwest Chapter. Not only is it clean, organized, and modern in format; it’s chock-full of information, including reports from chapter officers and a neat scavenger hunt game that lures you into exploring the site. We’d also like to thank the PNW folks for plugging Click University and the Chapter’s online CoP. Woohoo!
2006 Info-Expo Features 58 New Exhibitors
Just about 300 companies are signed up to showcase their products and services at this year’s Info-Expo in Baltimore. Among them are 61 new participants, and we would like to welcome them all to the SLA community. Here’s a list…
ACCESS INTELLIGENCE
ALECTO PUBLICATIONS LIMITED
ALTARAMA INFORMATION SYSTEMS
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS
AMERICAN METAL MARKET
AMERICAN PHYSIOLOGICAL SOCIETY
ANTIPODES BOOKS & BEYOND, LTD
ASCO PUBLICATIONS
BUSINESS INFORMATION AGENCY
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
CADENCE GROUP
CAPITOL DISTRICT INFORMATION
CHEMICAL INFORMATION SERVICES
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
CHILD CARE & EARLY EDUCATION RESEARCH CONNECTIONS
CODEMANTRA LLC
COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY PRESS
CONNING RESEARCH & CONSULTING
DREXEL UNIVERSITY – COLLEGE OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EDUCATION WEEK
EOL, INC.
THE FASAB JOURNAL
FETCHXL, LLC
FUTURE SCIENCE GROUP
GETABSTRACT, INC.
GOVERNMENT INSTITUTES
ICONITEL CONSULTING SERVICES
INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GROUP
INFORMATION SOURCES, INC.
INTELLIRESPONSE (COMTEXT SYSTEMS, INC.)
INTERNATIONAL FOOD INFORMATION SERVICE
ITN ARCHIVE
JCR LEATHER, INC.
JSTOR
KEYSTONE SYSTEMS
KOMPASS USA
LIFE SCIENCE ANALYTICS
THE MEDICAL LETTER
MYiLIBRARY
MILDER OFFICE
MPS TECHNOLOGIES
NATIONAL OFFICE SYSTEMS, INC.
NATIONAL REFERENCE CENTER FOR BIOETHICS LITERATURE – KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS
NOOZZ
NORTHERN MICROGRAPHICS
OSA – OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
PALINET
PHARMACEUTICAL PRESS
PRAEGER SECURITY INTERNATIONAL
SEMANTX LIFE SCIENCES, INC.
SHEILA GRECO ASSOCIATES LLC
SIMA, INC.
SNL FINANCIAL
TECHNICAL LANGUAGE SERVICE
THOMSON PETERSON’S
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS
VENDOME GROUP LLC
WANFANG DATA
WARC WORLD ADVERTISING RESEARCH CENTER
WINDHOVER INFORMATION
WORLD SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
Register for SLA 2006 Now!
SLA Annual Conference registration is up more than 11 percent over 2005 totals to date. But you can still take advantage of some great savings opportunities!
SLA 2006 promises to be one of the largest, most well-attended SLA events in years. That may be due to the strong programming and keynote speakers -- Gwen Ifill of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal.
Baltimore, with its Inner Harbor, is a great conference town, with lots of attractions and diversions. Be sure to sign up for tickets (#745) to the SLA Awards Reception aboard the USS Constellation in Baltimore’s world famous Inner Harbor. $55 gets you drinks, hors d’oeurves, and opportunities to network with the Stars in the SLA Constellation – all in the most unique setting for an event at SLA 2006.
Register for the conference and purchase your tickets online at www.sla.org/baltimore2006.
SLA Membership Recruitment a Top Priority
A growing membership is essential to the success of the SLA community. Our crack membership sales team is focusing on identifying new prospects AND helping you – our best membership sales representatives – to refer colleagues for membership. Here are some updates on recent and upcoming activities.
New SLA Members. Since January, SLA greeted 721 new members from the following 18 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States Of America. SLA Members are our biggest champions and promoters of membership. To all of you who continue to inform your colleagues about SLA’s valuable benefits and services, THANK YOU!
Upcoming Membership Study. SLA staff requests your participation in this year’s Membership Study. If SLA does not have your current e-mail address on file, you will not receive the online survey. Update your member profile now to make sure your SLA record reflects your current contact information.
17 May 2006
Topic: Always Fresh - Fast Content for Your Web Site and Users
Presenter: Darlene Fichter, Data Library Coordinator, University of Saskatchewan Library
24 May 2006
Topic: Taxonomy KM -- Where to Go Once the KM Program Is Already in Place
Presenter: Seth Earley, President, Earley & Associates, Inc.
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Live Site* Member $99 |
Replay*
Member $69 |
CEO Remarks on WSIS Now Available on Click University
SLA Chief Executive Officer Janice Lachance addressed a recent meeting of the Association’s Washington, DC, Chapter, speaking about her experiences at the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society. SLA members can now view and listen to her remarks on Click University at no charge. Go to www.clickuniversity.com for more details.
Lesley Ellen Harris' 2006 Schedule of Courses
Lesley Ellen Harris is a copyright, licensing, and e-commerce lawyer/consultant who works on legal, business, and strategic issues in the publishing, content, entertainment, Internet, and information industries. Lesley's clients range from individuals to governments, associations, unions, and corporations. She also works with libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions. Now you can learn directly from Lesley Ellen through Click University. Read more.
MEDIA ADVISORY: Press Access for SLA 2006 in Baltimore
EBSCO A-to-Z Now Available in 13 Languages
Factiva Gains Latin America Partner in ProQuest
getAbstract.com Now Offers FT Business Skills Pubs
Hoover’s Launches New Search Platform and Database
LexisNexis Partners with Inxight on Intel Analysis
Rumors Point to Microsoft Acquisition of Yahoo!
Reuters/BBC/Media Center Poll Finds Trust in Media an Issue
Springer Adds Ionics Journal to Its Lineup
Vivisimo Launches Plug-and Play for Third Party Search & Content
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