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Start managing your online reputation. Stop serving everyone in your organization. Learn project management skills. Prepare your library or information center for a disaster. Build learning communities within your organization or community.

You may think you don’t need to do any of these things, let alone all five. Think again. Privacy settings provide only minimal security, serving everyone creates unrealistic expectations and prevents your library or information center from becoming a full partner on projects, and libraries and information centers will not survive if they view their mission as nothing more than providing information. And who could have guessed a year ago that a hurricane would devastate New York, bomb blasts would disrupt the Boston Marathon, and a shooter would enter a college library in California?

The July-August Information Outlook takes the guesswork out of these five critical actions. Add an interview with SLA member Ned Potter, a preview of “the next great copyright act,” and a wrap-up of the SLA 2013 Annual Conference, and this issue has something for even the most knowledgeable information professional.

SLA would also like to thank the issue’s advertisers for their support:

• Thomson Reuters
• Wolters Kluwer | Ovid
• Bloomberg Law/Bloomberg BNA
• BMJ Group
• American Physiological Society

Dig in. Read the July-August issue now!

The post July-August Information Outlook Now Available appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Organizational effectiveness begins with an enterprise-wide knowledge culture. KMKS103 provides guidelines for developing the vision, mission, and values statements for aligning knowledge management (KM) and knowledge services with organizational priorities.  In the course, you will learn to identify critical steps for launching or enhancing service delivery for the benefit of the larger organization.  Instructors Guy St. Clair and Dale Stanley will cover

• knowledge strategy basics, including definitions and applications
• organizational structure and the environment for KM/knowledge services
• visioning vs. planning
• determining strategic direction
• change management and change implementation
• infrastructure and planning for future needs

KMKS103 is part of Click University’s Certificate in Knowledge Management/Knowledge Services program, but any course may be taken à la carte.

KMKS103
Dates: August 12 – 28, 2013 (full schedule)
Format:  Live online lectures and discussions, and independent reading
Cost:  $495/members | $595/non-members

Read more from instructor Dale Stanley about the need for leaders in knowledge services, and how you can succeed in that role.

Questions?  Contact Click University staff.

The post What You Need to Know About Knowledge Culture in Your Organization appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

SLA is now accepting proposals for papers to be presented at the 2014 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO, to be held 8-10 June in Vancouver. Paper topics should be related to library science, information management, or other issues pertaining to client service, technology, or administration in special libraries. Paper topics should be relevant to the conference theme, Beyond Borders, and special consideration will be given to topics that address one of the three daily themes: Embedded Information Services, Digital Content and Big Data, and Leadership in the Human Age.

A panel of SLA members will conduct a blind review of the proposals, and the strongest proposals will be selected for development into papers. Proposals will be evaluated on the strength of the ideas, quality of the writing, potential member interest, and relevancy to the conference theme.

Proposed papers must also meet these requirements:

• At least one author must be a member of SLA.
• At least one author must commit to presenting the paper at the 2014 Annual Conference.
• The proposal must be submitted by 6 December 2013.
• The paper must not have been published in, or submitted to, any other publication or conference planning group.
• The author (and any co-authors) must sign a copyright assignment form that permits SLA to use the paper in various formats.

Deadlines are as follows:

6 December 2013: Applicants submit their proposals in abstract form. Abstracts should be single-spaced Word documents (or plain text) between 250 and 300 words in length, or roughly one page in 12-point type.

13 January 2014: Applicants are notified of the review panel’s decisions, and those with the strongest proposals are invited to develop them into full papers.

2 May 2014: Authors submit their papers and signed copyright assignment forms.

8-10 June 2014: Authors deliver 15-minute presentations of their papers during 90-minute sessions.

To learn more, read the contributed papers presented at SLA 2013 or contact Stacey Greenwell at staceyg@email.uky.edu.

The post Got Research? Share It at SLA 2014! appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

The first skill of an innovator is questioning, really questioning.  We should be challenging sacred cows and entrenched traditions of our profession and in our jobs in light of facts about how our organizations operate, looking for better ways to serve.

The second skill of an innovator is that of observing, both internally and externally. We can learn more about the information seeking habits of our customers by following studies that others have done and learning how to do our own studies.  Due to the diversity of SLA’s divisions, we also have an opportunity to observe how other industries are adapting to this digital age both through conference presentations and the increased use of division webinars.

The third skill is willingness to experiment and SLA is the perfect “safe haven” for experimentation since it doesn’t directly risk my pay or benefits if the effort fails.  Through volunteer efforts with SLA, we can build our skills in running meetings, managing work teams, building proficiency in managing webinars and even building technology skills such as WordPress Web site management.

The fourth skill of innovative people is networking or relationship building. Having an opportunity to build relationships with peers, find mentors, interact with new and existing information providers, and make new friends is the key to building a professional community that people want to be a part of.  Even with the growth of social media, our virtual relationships are stronger with a face-to-face foundation which can happen at the annual conference and in local chapter events.

The final skill of Innovators DNA is associating which pulls together the four actions (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) to create new connections.  Those mental connections are the spark of innovation and have spawned new business processes and changed the world.  Learning from others who have made unconventional associations to create new services for our customers helps us to exercise that “associating” muscle ourselves and overcome potential blind spots.

Building a culture that allows and encourages these innovative traits at both the manager level and employee level will challenge traditional leadership and traditional librarianship but will result in a more relevant and innovative organization.  Whether we have the support where we are or not, are we taking advantage of the opportunities available to us through SLA to build these innovative traits or simply running the treadmill to retirement?

-James

http://about.me/cmndr_king

The post It’s in the DNA – how SLA has helped my career – James King, Chapter Cabinet Chair candidate appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

When I was first entering the profession SLA was great because with the diverse group of careers held by our members it allowed me to learn about other professions (within my first few months in SLA-NY I’d had sit down talks with librarians from banking, law, consulting, and news) and see if a certain career was where I’d like to grow in or learn about. We also have so many members that belong to other associations that it allowed great introductions to other memberships. When I made the recent move to a law office, while still specializing in finance, so many New York members invited me to come to Law Library Association of Greater New York (LLAGNY) events. That sense of community and welcoming is what has always helped me grow as a professional.

Now SLA enriches me by allowing me to meet other members and hear what they know and what skills they value. Skills improvement is the best way SLA currently challenges me. Every time I attend a conference, webinar, or read a division email I feel challenged to keep learning and developing as an informational professional. I always come back from conference excited and recharged to keep learning and never become complacent in my career.

The third way SLA has helped me grow professionally has come from volunteering for my chapter. The sense of involvement and improvement from giving back has helped me so much in my career. Where else would I get the opportunity to mentor, help build the long term goal of an organization, teach a class, help design a website, and get comfortable with public speaking all in one place? I firmly believe you get back double what you put in with SLA, and I can’t wait to see what volunteering on the international level will bring. I hope you will allow me the opportunity.

The post How has SLA helped me grow professionally? appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Considering that my first interaction with SLA was them giving me money via a travel grant to attend Annual, we got started off on an extremely good foot! Probably clad in a killer shoe.

I’ve been around ever since that 1997 conference in Seattle, with some years missed but most not. However, I really began to get involved around 1999 when the director of the College of Insurance library, Barbie Keiser (hi, Barbie!), actively encouraged me to participate in the Insurance & Employee Benefits Division. I was guest editor for their newsletter, was elected Secretary of the Division and began to realize that leadership within SLA was not something that was held apart for long-term or already recognized members – anyone could step up and get actively involved and hold a Division-level board position.  I began to transfer this idea of no boundaries to my career.  The sign doesn’t say no?  Then I assume yes!

Barbie could have let me continue to do my job at the insurance library (I was the cataloger/gov doc librarian) and allow me to go to Annual without making any further effort, but it was that extra step she took of letting me know there was more to it that is directly related to the fact that I’m now running for this board position. So now you know who to blame (thanks, Barbie!)

It was that start and my continued work with the Information Technology and Academic Divisions as well as my local chapters that has sharpened my wits, my networking skills, my ability to pitch an idea, my mentoring abilities, my vision of the profession.

Without SLA, I would have felt a bit isolated during my time at EBSCO. I loved the company and I loved the job, but I was in a nontraditional role in a nontraditional setting. SLA Leadership and Annual allowed me to mingle with My People twice a year and feel like I still had my finger on the pulse of what was going on in the broader information world. You can read a million articles and watch a million webcasts, but NOTHING replaces talking face to face with the people who are doing the stuff.

Without SLA, I would not have been able to as skillfully adapt my career to the changes I saw coming down the road, or take the calculated risks I have with my career that have paid off so very well. SLA has provided me with context and a group of brilliant sounding boards when I needed to bounce ideas around before doing something possibly really stupid (or really awesome).

Coming out the other side of over 15 years of SLA, I’m a confident risk-taker who’s still excited about the profession. SLA has been a big part of getting me there.

The post How has involvement with SLA over the years helped you grow professionally and personally? appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Valerie Ryder, Candidate for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect

Throughout my career, SLA has been my “go-to” place for finding expertise, my professional safety net in time of career transition, and the nucleus of my professional friendships.  In the early stages of my career, I found many of my informal mentors among the ranks of the local SLA chapter and the more geographically dispersed divisions in which I became involved.  Serving in chapter and division roles gave me the opportunity of practicing leadership skills in a low-risk environment while developing friendships with other SLA members.  As my confidence built, I became a division chair-elect, program planner and chair.  Those opportunities provided the challenges of developing and refining my project planning techniques, communication skills, and abilities to motivate others towards achieving a common goal.  I had strong role models within the chapter and division who guided me and challenged me to become all that I could be.

In mid-career I knew that as I assumed new job responsibilities or changed careers I could always reach out to other SLA members, whether or not I knew them, for advice or answers to my questions.  One of the enduring strengths of SLA is that its members always help each other and willingly share their knowledge.  This tradition continues today in a more spontaneous and ubiquitous way through the various unit listservs and social media channels to enhance person-to-person contacts.  It amazes me how quickly even the most esoteric question that is posed through these conduits is answered by the ever-present centers of expertise that are SLA.  I have learned so much about knowledge areas outside my core domain by following these discussions.

During my own job losses and career transitions, I turned to my network of SLA colleagues to sustain my confidence and be my safety net of professional contacts.  I re-invested in my professional skills through the offerings of SLA Click University as well as SLA Career Connection Seminars or divisional programming at Annual Conferences.  I can attribute my three successful “landings” during career transition to connections that I made through SLA.

As I gained experience and expertise of my own, I sought ways to give back to the professional association that gave me a strong foundation upon which to build my own career.  Sharing my knowledge through presentations at local chapter meetings also helped me to fine tune my public speaking skills.  When I saw that there was an unmet need to do more to help chapter members find jobs in a tough economic climate, I volunteered to be chapter Employment Chair and stared writing articles for the chapter bulletin about job-hunting, resume writing, and interviewing techniques.  During another economic downturn and in a different chapter I created and presented a three-part seminar series on these key success factors for job seekers.

As Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect I would like to facilitate more opportunities for chapter leaders to learn from each other, share best practices or lessons learned, and continue the mentoring roles that my predecessors have begun to strengthen the SLA leadership pipeline.

The post How SLA has helped me throughout my career – Valerie Ryder, Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

In January 2011, I (Jill Hurst-Wahl)  joined the SLA Board of Directors after being elected by you. I joined already knowing much of what the Board was discussing, because I had been keeping my eyes and ear open, and because as a Board candidate I had been able to listen to the Board meetings for several months. I knew that I was joining a Board that had work to do!

During my first year on the Board (2011), my biggest challenge was learning how things really operate in the Association. No matter how much you know about a group, how it really works may not be known. What is the delineation of duties between the Board and the staff? Who sets policy and who implements those policies? I learned that “who” depends a bit on the “what”, and that the most important point is that the Board and staff agree.

In 2011 and 2012, Cindy Romaine and Brent Mai had the Board develop a strategic agenda for the Association, and many you have been working with us on it. That agenda ends in 2014, and clearly our efforts in those areas will need to continue. If we stop strategizing, if we stop trying to improve, then we will no longer be. (That is a good motto for us as individuals as well as us as an association.)

Now in 2013, I’m in my third year as director and the work has not slowed down. In each year, some things have been constants. There have been long and productive face-to-face meetings at Leadership Summit and the Annual Conference, as well as meetings held by conference call during the other months. You may be surprised at the amount of work that can occur during the 1-1.5 hour calls. (Agenda? Check. Robert’s Rules? Check. Prework? Check.) Each year, we become liaisons to various units, we proctor division board meetings, and we talk to a lot of members. We hear your questions, concerns, joys, and desires. What we hear informs our meetings and our decisions. You may be surprised that SLA members talk to us about SLA business while we’re attending non-SLA events, so we are always “on the clock”, always working.

At the Annual Conference, every member of the Board talks with exhibitors in the INFO-EXPO to get feedback on the event and to thank them for their participation. Those conversations help us understand aspects of how the conference is going, that may not be obvious, and have given me an opportunity to talk to companies that I might not have otherwise. The downside is that there are other companies that I would like to visit in the INFO-EXPO and can’t find the time to do it. I’m looking forward to Vancouver, when the time I spend in the INFO-EXPO will be my own!

When I ran for the Board in 2010 and spoke to you in New Orleans, I talked about SLA being my family and the desire to make things more transparent. While there is always room for improvement, our activities and those of the entire Association are indeed more transparent. I’m thankful to Cindy Romaine, Brent Mai and Deb Hunt – and especially grateful to Den Trefethen and John DiGilio – for their efforts to make that happen.

Yes, you are still my family! These past three years have been my attempt to give back to you the support and hope that you have given to me. Like any family, we have our rough moments and, like any family, we find ways to pull together and pull through. And especially like any family, our best conversations happen over food! So I’m looking forward to sharing a meal or a cup of coffee (er…wine?) in Vancouver with you. I’ll be “off the clock” and ready for what comes my way!

The post Looking Back…as a director on the SLA Board appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

The post #SLAtalk Roundup! Taking a Vacation that Works appeared first on Special Libraries Association.

Last month, information professionals from around the world gathered in San Diego to network with peers, learn from industry leaders, and meet with vendors to test drive the latest products and services. Some of them came for an additional reason–to present papers that addressed topics such as those in the paragraph above. These “contributed papers” were presented in dedicated conference sessions, with four papers delivered on each day of the conference.

The papers are now posted in the SLA 2013 Annual Conference online planner. Links to the papers are published below; the papers are organized according to the dates on which they were presented. The topic descriptions are excerpted from the papers themselves.

Sunday, June 9

Comparing the Indexing of Cited Journals to Identify the Premier Database for a Specific Discipline
Giovanna Badia
“In research-intensive academic institutions, libraries often subscribe to more than one database to cover any given discipline. While databases overlap, they also often contain unique content and features that differentiate them from their competitors. From these databases, can we identify the premier database in a field?”

Determining Value: Using Rank to Identify Library Characteristics that Contribute to the Bottom Line
Margaret Carroll
“Pressure to be a performing asset impacts a library the same as any division in a for-profit organization. Yet there remains little agreement as to best practices for delivering library value. A study was undertaken to learn which library characteristics relate to its parent organization’s net profitability. For the study, a research design was developed using rank to operationalize relative measures of value.”

Outgoogling Google: Connecting Your Users to Content through a Single Search
John Coll
“For many libraries, Google remains the key challenge and indeed threat for the continued delivery of services. Attempts to downplay or criticize the reliability of this search tool have generally proved fruitless. The desire to route enquiries through libraries are, the author argues, a pointless and backward step that misunderstands the new paradigm for information retrieval. This paper outlines how the National Library of Scotland has taken a very different approach to information provision and, rather than encouraging users to make use of intermediaries such as librarians, instead positions the Google type interface as the principal means to enable relevant content to be delivered to the user.”

Social Media and Citation Metrics
Lisa Galloway and Anne Rauh
“Assessing the impact of a scholar’s work can be measured by several factors, including the number of peer-reviewed publications, citations to these publications, and the influence of the publications. These metrics take a relatively long time to accumulate, [and] they do not tell the entire story. As scholars communicate more frequently and more meaningfully with social media tools, the important of quantifying these interactions is evident.”

Monday, June 10

After the Storm: Establishing Library and Information Services from a Temporary Location
Hildy Dworkin
“The McMillan Library provides services to the New York City Human Resources Administration [and is] located at the agency’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan. HRA’s building was badly damaged during Superstorm Sandy. It was unclear when the building would reopen. In this paper I describe our experience in re-establishing services to a large population without access to our equipment and files.”

Peeking Over Cubicles: An Ethnographic Approach to Knowledge Management
William Cook
“Knowledge audits are the first and most critical step of any knowledge management initiative. In the literature, surveys and interviews are the standard method for conducting knowledge audits. Moving away from the traditional, this paper argues the effectiveness of a holistic ethnography, specifically participant observation.”

There’s an Elephant in the Room, but Your Staff Isn’t: Connecting and Collaborating with Your Off-Shore Team
Helen Poot and Bill Patterson
“How do you build a team from a distance, particularly when team members come with different cultures, perspectives and objectives? How do you ensure high quality, timely responses across time zones and geography? Over the past five years, I’ve had the opportunity to create and manage both captive and outsourced research teams, both in India. In this paper, I’d like to share some of the practices [that] worked.”

Using Mobile Technologies to Connect Face to Face
Louise Verma
“Librarianship has been undergoing a transformation away from simply connecting people to collections and is increasingly moving toward connecting people with each other. David Weinberger at Harvard University advocates this in his ‘library as platform’ manifesto. Weinberger urges libraries to start thinking of themselves as part of the infrastructure rather than simply a portal that users go through. With these thoughts in mind, the question becomes: How can a small special library be a conduit for connecting its diverse and often siloed user communities?”

Tuesday, June 11

Beyond the Repository: Rethinking Data Services at the University of Maryland
Robin Dasler, Trevor Munoz, Karl Nilsen, and Sarah Hovde
“In recent years, academic libraries have become increasingly concerned with data management and data curation. When asked by campus administration to help develop support for data management and data-driven research on campus, librarians from the University of Maryland consciously sought to develop active, perhaps even interventionist, approaches to data. This paper describes both the benefits and the challenges encountered during the development of a ‘business case’ for the research data services program.”

Modern Tools Solve Ancient Riddle
Cindy Romaine
“This paper demonstrates how to use the ‘connect, collaborate, strategize’ model to the fullest, as we describe how information professionals solved a classic information overload problem. The client, ICANN, now offers users a Web portal that pulls data from nearly 100 sources, combines and filters the information, and outputs the results into logical streams.”

A New Approach to Needs Assessment and Communication to Connect and Collaborate with Faculty
Cindy Elliott, Jim Martin, Mary Feeney, and Ricardo Andrade
“In 2010, the [University of Arizona] Libraries began to look at its organizational structure. The Research Services Team (RST) was formed. The highest priority work for the team is two-way communication with UA instructional and research units and the assessment of their needs, as these inform all of the libraries’ other services.”

Supporting NIH Grantees through a Collaboration between the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library, the University of Michigan Medical School Office of Research and the University of Michigan Office of Research and Sponsored Projects
Merle Rosenzweig and Bethany Harris
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest provider of funds for medical research in the world. Since the University of Michigan Medical School receives a substantial amount of grant funding from NIH each fiscal year, the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library has built a strong collaboration with units at the University of Michigan that are instrumental in working with NIH grantees to manage all aspects of the grant process. This paper describes this collaboration.”

The post SLA 2013 Contributed Papers Now Online appeared first on Special Libraries Association.