Multiply the Power of Your Knowledge at SLA2021
Many people have heard the expression “knowledge is power.” Far fewer are familiar with “knowledge shared is knowledge squared,” which is another way of saying that sharing knowledge multiplies its power exponentially.
Special librarians manage information resources for government agencies, businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations, so they intuitively understand the value of sharing knowledge. The challenge is getting them to share their own knowledge—their expertise, insights, and lessons learned—outside their organizations, with their peers and professional networks.
That’s the challenge the SLA Annual Conference is uniquely designed to address. The conference brings together hundreds of special librarians, information professionals and industry partners to connect, learn and share. The sharing can take many forms, from a 5-minute conversation about COVID-19 safety measures at a networking event to a 60-minute presentation on taxonomy development at an education session. The lessons from these conversations and presentations can reverberate throughout the conference and, ultimately, across the profession, multiplying their power and impact.
That’s especially true of knowledge gained from conference sessions that attendees rate highly. Based on post-conference surveys, the following sessions presented at SLA2020 were the most popular with attendees:
- 10 Secrets of Successful Live Virtual Learning
- Fostering Diversity in Science: Physics Roundtable
- Fighting Bias, One Search at a Time
- Misinformation, Disinformation, and Manipulated Media: What’s Your Protection Plan?
- The ROI of Research Services: Measure Value, Not Usage
- Project Management for the Information Professional
- Accelerating the Transition to Open Access
- An ABC of Bias and why you should love your enemy!
- Graphic Design 101: Marketing and Data Visualization Tips for the Non-Designer
- The Universe in a Slide of Glass: the History, Preservation, and Data Mining of Astronomical Plates
The variety of topics addressed by these sessions—open access, data visualization, and search engine bias, to name just three—reflect the diverse environments in which special librarians and information professionals work and the challenges they face as well as the breadth of knowledge they possess. That knowledge is being sought once again for sharing at SLA2021, which (like SLA2020) will be conducted virtually.
Do you have insights, expertise and lessons that your peers might find useful? SLA2020 attendees said they were especially interested in presentations on technology, trends, career advancement, data management, and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) at future meetings, so knowledge about these topics is particularly valuable. But, as the list above demonstrates, the universe of potential session topics is nearly unlimited.
Share your knowledge at SLA2021 by submitting a session proposal no later than Monday, February 15. Prefer to write and present a paper? The deadline to submit a paper abstract is Monday, February 22.
Multiply the power of your knowledge by presenting at SLA2021!
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