Rocky Mountain Chapter SLA Blog

Ten Remarkable Leaders - A Glimpse at the SLA Director Candidates

Posted with permission of the author....

I thought this might be of interest to our RMSLA membership who have the right to vote for SLA leaders ........this originally appeared on the NJ blog, then on the Leadership list.  It's been forwarded to other lists, where I saw it, but I asked Eric if I could share it with you.  In past years I've had the privilege of attending leadership functions where I met the candidates and heard them speak, and so I learned more about them, but I know most of us do not.  I found this helpful.

Marcy Rodney
RSL Research Group
mrodney@rslresearch.com

---

A Glimpse at the SLA Director Candidates

(http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/njsla/2008/08/a-glimpse-at-th.html)

I've finally posted reviews of the bios and videos of all ten remarkable candidates running for a position on the 2009 SLA Board of Directors. The election runs Sept. 10-Oct. 1. Complete information on voting and the candidates is on the SLA site.

The reviews provide just a sample of the creativity, passion, knowledge and skills each person brings to our association. For each office, I attempted to post a more-or-less equal amount of information from each candidate's bio and video speech. But you should judge for yourself, by reading the bios, watching the videos and participating in the call-in sessions. (Again, all this information is available via the link above.)

Here's a recap of the reviews:

• Comments on SLA President-Elect Candidates
• Passionate Connections: Barrancotto and Wolfish Stump for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect
• Giving Back and Expanding: Chong-Williams and Sweeney Run for Division Cabinet Chair-Elect
• Director Candidates: Breaking Barriers in Industry, Geography, Technology and Diversity

--
Best regards,

Eric Schwarz
NJ Chapter President-Elect
Researcher and business analyst
eric@ericthelibrarian.com

http://www.ericthelibrarian.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ericcschwarz

Library Camp of the West

For all those interested in discussing LIS issues that matter most to you in an invigorating setting, come to the "Library Camp of the West" on October 10, 2008. 

http://librarycampwest.pbwiki.com/

These two blog posts provide some background material for the unconference.

http://tinyurl.com/5j9557
http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom/224

From the Library Camp of the West pbwiki:  "Library Camp of the West is an unconference. Instead of creating a schedule of presentations and keynotes in advance, we (that includes you) will create a loose plan for the conference on this wiki ahead of time. On the morning of the conference, we'll set the day's schedule and break out into small groups over several sessions based on what attendees want to talk about.

Unconferences work when everyone participates. "Come with ideas, notes, examples, visual aides, puppets, whatever. Leave the PowerPoint at home."

Library Camp of the West, the first unconference in the region and will be held on October 10, 2008 at the University of Denver.  It is unorganized by Joe Kraus of the Penrose Library at the University of Denver, Steve Lawson of the Tutt Library at Colorado College, and Laura Crossett of the Park County Library System in WY.

Registration is free!  Hurry, though, because attendance might be capped at 100-150 or so.  We currently have 66+ signed up.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Joe Kraus

RMSLA Night at the Ballpark

Please join RMSLA at the ballpark on Saturday, September 6th, 6:05pm. Bring out your family and friends to join us! We'll have a fun and relaxing time watching great baseball and supporting the Rebecca Jackson Scholarship fund. Please email me if you have any questions: msantos@international.edu

Order Form for tickets

Manuel Santos
President-Elect

Remember SLA Denver

Remember Gore's great presentation at SLA Denver last year?  There's a one-minute video of it on YouTube   

Scott Brown's Paper and Presentation at SLA 2008

Cheers for Scott! Scott Brown submitted a paper for the 2008 SLA conference and was accepted. He presented at the conference on Tuesday, June 17th and from what I hear, was just fabulous!

Scott's paper is entitled "Breaking Rules, Building Virtual Bridges: Using Second Life for Information Awareness in the Enterprise". All papers are available on the SLA 2008 Contributed Papers website.

Be sure to check out Scott's paper! Congratulations Scott :)

And don't forget to check out the SLA 2008 pictures on flickr.

Christy Confetti Higgins

RMSLA Information Ethics Town hall meeting summary

SLA has begun a year long conversation on Information Ethics. Early in 2008, Ethics Ambassadors were recruited to “get the ball rolling” in each chapter and division.  My task, as chapter Ethics Ambassador, is to get the discussion started in our chapter – to get you thinking about information ethics, and to gather information on how SLA members face information ethics challenges in the form of examples and stories of situations and outcomes.

As part of this initiative, the Ethics Work Group recommended that SLA pursue the establishment of ethics guidelines for its members. 

After analyzing the codes of ten professional associations, the SLA Ethics workgroup recommend eight components as being relevant to SLA members:

• Professional development
• Highest levels of service
• Responsibility for quality of systems, services, materials
• Integrity and Accurate representation of expertise
• Legal considerations and intellectual property concerns
• Treatment of / relations hip employer, colleagues, and users
• Conflicts of interest
• Confidentiality and privacy

Our chapter has two surveys up to gather feedback from our members.

The first survey will introduce you to the proposed components of an Ethics code for SLA members. Our collective feedback will help steer the direction of the Association's Guidelines on Information Ethics.

• Access Survey

The results of the preliminary survey and the presentation from our May 28^th Information Ethics Town hall meeting are available on or chapter website or here.

The purpose of the second survey is to gather examples of ethical dilemmas encountered by our chapter members.  This survey has only five questions (you can choose to answer one or more questions; responses are not required for each question). The survey is completely anonymous.

Both of these surveys will be open through June 10^th. 

I will be sharing the results of both surveys with the Ethics group and other Ethics ambassadors on June 14^th in Seattle.

Thank you!
Kathleen Rainwater
RMSLA Ethics Ambassador

 

Former RMSLAer Kathy Reese publishes great copyright article!

Have you dug your June 2008 Information Outlook out of the leaning tower of mail yet?  Well, toss it into your to-be-read-on-the-flight-to-Seattle pile -- former RMSLAer and USWest/Qwest librarian extraordinaire Kathy Reese has co-authored an excellent article on one of my most feared topics, copyright. 

Now with CI vendor Cipher Systems, Kathy and Cipher colleague Eric Badertscher have taken a very thoughtful look at the potential pitfalls for special librarians and their clients, and the slip 'n' slide everchangin' legal  landscape.  "Taking the Confusion Out of Copyright in an Internet Age", page 62, is worth your time.  There is a save for future reference list of global resources that, while glancing through, reminds one not to be US or Euro-centric.

And knowing Kathy, (full confession, I did my practicum under her at USWest) the moment it was published she started worrying about what she left out/missed/got wrong.  Hey Kathy!  Waytago on a great article.

Marcy Rodney

Event: Information Ethics Town Hall Meeting

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (RMSLA) invites you to attend an Information Ethics Town Hall Meeting

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Special librarians are the best knowledge managers of Information Ethics in their organizations. Whether a matter of database integrity, copyright, records management or privacy, we possess the professional expertise to stay on top of these issues. SLA is undergoing a year-long conversation on Information Ethics in order to help craft official guidelines for the association and for future efforts to promote the value of our profession to a wider audience. At this Town Hall Meeting we’ll be looking for anecdotes, stories and examples of information ethics in practice (or not in practice) at your library or organization. The event will start off with a presentation by Kathleen Rainwater on ethics followed by what promises to be a lively and interactive session. Kathleen, our chapter’s Ethics Ambassador, will summarize our findings to share in a report back to headquarters. This is just the start of an important effort on behalf of our association.

WHEN
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
6:00 – 6:30 Registration, Networking, Food
6:30-7:15 Presentation and Discussion led by Kathleen Rainwater
7:15 – 7:45 Questions & Wrap Up A light meal will be served.

COST
$6.00 (Pay at the door with cash or check. Make check payable to RMSLA)

WHERE
Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library
Eisenhower Meeting Room
3 Community Park Rd.
Broomfield, CO 80020
720-887-2350 Map and directions: http://www.broomfield.org/library/maps/direction_map.shtml

Please R.S.V.P. to Manuel Santos at msantos@international.edu by May 21, 2008.

CONTACT WITH QUESTIONS
Kathleen Rainwater, Corporate Librarian, Gates Corporation
krainwatr@hotmail.com  303.744.4150

Special Thanks: Special Thanks to Cheryl German for hosting the meeting in Broomfield. 

Shoutouts to Kim Dority and Marcy Phelps

RMSLA's own Kim Dority, has another writing credit to her name -- Rachel Singer Gordon's new book, What's the Alternative? Career Options for Librarians and Info Pros, features a forward written by our Kim, author of Rethinking Information Work.  I haven't had a chance to check out Gordon's new book yet, but it's on my list of must-buy titles, she always makes me think.

And congratulations to RMSLAer Marcy Phelps, AIIP's president-elect!  That's quite a responsibility to tackle, and Marcy is definitely up to the job.  And while we're congratulating her, by all means check out her blog -- it's got some good search tips!

If you're writing, teaching, chairing, publishing, jumping off mountaintops, sipping chai in Nepal, trying something you've never tried before -- whatever your adventure is, let the rest of us know.

Marcia J. Rodney

2008 Innovate - Second Life

As you know, the President of SLA, Steven Abrams, has a theme for 2008  - Innovate! On March 13th, 2008,  RMSLA members had a chance to learn about a virtual world technology and possible ways to add the technology to their repertoire of skills. Scott Brown and Christy Confetti Higgins offered a two part webinar on Second Life. Part one was a fantastic introduction to Second Life and how it can be used in a corporate and/or library environment. To quote participants’ comments during the presentation, “way cool,” “cool,” and “WOW.” Scott and Christy have given the chapter permission to post the PDF version of the presentation at the RMSLA web site and here.

The second part of the webinar was held on Friday, March 21st, 2008. We went into Second Life for an overview of the basics of Second Life - how to move, sit, teleport, search, communicate and interact. We all created our avatars before the session and joined the RMSLA Community group in Second Life. What an experience!

Wanda McDavid

The Plight of the Special Librarian: Working With Limited Resources

You probably know that CAL has just created a new "association" within their organization called the Colorado Association of Special Libraries (CoASL).  Now there are 4 associations within CAL (Academic, School, Public and Special).   The main function of the associations are educational, and each one puts on a spring workshop each year and all are welcome to attend.

 

I am co-cordinating the programming for CoASL's first spring workshop along with Jean Heilig.  The date of the workshop is June 6th, 2008.  Title of the workshop is The Plight of the Special Librarian:  Working With Limited Resources.  It will be held at the Cardinal Stafford Library at St. John Vianney Seminary, 1300 South Steele St., which is centrally-located in Denver near I-25 and Colo. Blvd or University, near Mississippi.

 

Details and registration information will be sent to the local library listservs soon.  The planned program includes:

• A tour of Cardinal Stafford Library (morning)

• Panel:  Volunteers as an Untapped Resource.  Including speaker from Colorado Talking Book Library, discussing where to recruit volunteers, how to coordinate volunteers.  Other librarian TBD,  focusing on how to match volunteers with projects and retain them.  Includes practical discussion.

• Panel:  Utilizing and Mentoring Students.  Moderated by Robbie Marks, and speakers include Kelly Visnak from Emporia and Clara Sitter from DU talking about their programs, plus a student and mentor's experience. 

• Working with Contractors/Subcontractors, a talk by Marcy Phelps from Phelps Research.  What to do when you have limited resources and how to contract for professional services outside of your library.   Which  types of work or projects that they can do for you more cost-effectively, etc.  How contractors can provide a solution when you're strapped for resources, time, money, your staff is cut or absent, or you have multiple projects with pending deadlines.

• Outsourcing - Talking about the "O" word.  Jenny Garcia (University of Wyoming Libraries) and/or Addie Fletcher (Denver Medical Library) from CCML Advocacy Committee will present a practical guide for you to provide to administrators evaluating your library for outsourcing, and encouraging people to be proactive in evaluating their library's services and resources before the question of outsourcing arises.  How to show cost-effectiveness and survive the process.  Also examines what types of services can be outsourced to maintain the library during staff and budget cuts.

• Rosalind Dudden (National Jewish Center for Research & Immunology), author of the new book, Using Benchmarking, Needs Assessment, Quality Improvement, Outcome Measurement, and Library Standards: A How-to-do-it Manual,  will provide a practical presentation on library measurement tools, covering the necessity of measuring library services and which types of measurement tools can help with the task.  Includes evaluating services for improvement or efficiency, and helping with the decision-making process for reducing or outsourcing services. 

It's a full-day conference and goes from 8:15 until 5 pm and includes lunch.  It is only $50 (with the option for people to attend 1/2 day for $25).  Non-CAL members may pay slightly more.

 

Best regards,

Linda

Linda A. Van Wert

Librarian/Information Specialist

Gambro BCT

10811 W. Collins Ave.

Lakewood, CO   80215

February 2008 Dinearounds

The February 2008 Dinearounds have been a great success! A total of 38 people have attended the 4 regional dinearounds. Members shared good food, conversation, and the opportunity to hear first hand about the Leadership Summit held in Louisville, Kentucky. There is one more Dinearound scheduled and it is a Virtual Dinearound scheduled for Monday, February 25 at 12:00 noon. If your interested in attending the Virtual dinearound send an email to wanda.mcdavid@access-information.com.

Here is a copy of the handout distributed at each Dinearound.

2008 Leadership Summit Louisville Kentucky – All the handouts from the Leadership Summit are posted at http://www.sla.org/content/resources/leadcenter/LeadershipSummit/08leadsummit/handouts.cfm

Stephen Abram – SLA President speech is available at http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/01/sla_louisville.html and http://www.sirsidynix.com/Resources/Pdfs/Company/Abram/SLA_Louisville.pdf

Janice LaChance the CEO of the association listed some of the achievements in 2007.

Outreach to potential members

Implementation of new technology

Over 5,000 people attended the Annual Conference held in Denver

The association has an operating surplus for the 5^th straight year

Our membership increased by 127 new members

The AMS (Association Management System is in progress – there are some problems & challenges

Information outlook is easier to read & navigate.

More chapters are using Survey Monkey

The association renewed our contract with ebrary and there are more e-books available to members – a knowledge management component is being added

In 2008 the association is doing a comprehensive analysis of the role in the future & changes in the marketplace with the Alignment Initiative being conducted by Fleishman Hillard also SLA is going green in 2008. http://www.sla.org/PDFs/2008LS_FHAlignmentPresentation.pdf and http://www.sla.org/PDFs/2008LS_StrategicAlignmentProjectUpdate.pdf

2009 Centennial Anniversary of SLA – what can we as a chapter do?

An excellent interactive session on Thursday was the “Remembering the Future” session particularly the “Environmental Timeline” exercise. We applied it to our current work environment and used it as a strategic planning tool and then we applied the same tool to the future of SLA.

2009 The Leadership Summit promoted the benefits of membership. Do you know your SLA member ID and password? If not send a request through the SLA Website. 

Here are a few benefits of membership listed for your convenience.

Our major networking tool - the membership directory

CLICK University has tons of free and fee based programs.

Each month there is a free CLICK U course of the month you will also find some free podcasts and webcasts.

There are 990 eBrary e-books on management and leadership topics available for free! 

SLA provides us with Factiva newsfeeds on topics of interest to librarians.

SLA’s NewsGator feeds of over one hundred information topics are a member benefit.

Find more value ideas here: http://www.sla.org/content/membership/mbrbenefits/index.cfm

Wanda McDavid

Leadership Summit 2008

The SLA Leadership Summit in Louisville, Kentucky was very exciting and stimulating. The Kentucky Chapter hosted a great meeting.

On Thursday evening they hosted a reception at the Louisville Slugger Museum. If you were brave enough, you could even step into the batting cage and try your hand at batting. I personally passed on that!

Three members of the RMSLA Chapter attended the event, Ty Webb as one of the new Directors on the SLA Board, Scott Brown as the Competitive Intelligence Division President and myself as the President of our chapter. In the coming weeks I hope to share many of the things I learned including all of the resources available to us as part of our membership. Our membership is a valuable asset to our own organizations as well as personally! Suffice to say, I came away energized and enthusiastic about the year ahead.

Hopefully you will have the opportunity to participate in one of the February Dinearounds. Scott, and I plan  to share highlights of the Leadership Summit. We plan to offer a virtual dinearound again for those members who cannot make one of the regional dinearounds.

One of my goals is to keep in touch with chapter members and I think our chapter blog is a great tool. Keep in mind that I'm a novice. Hopefully you will see frequent postings from me and as Karl Fisch said at the Shirley Alldredge Lecture - let's enter into the conversation.

Wanda McDavid
wanda.mcdavid@access-information.com

Congratulations to the RMSLA Officers for 2008!

Congratulations to the RMSLA Officers for 2008!

Wanda McDavid, President
Manuel Santos, President-Elect
Scott Brown, Past President
Chris Cook, Secretary
Heather Whitehead, Treasurer
Monnie Nilsson, Director
Lori Dubois, Director

Kudos to RMSLAer Marcy Phelps, FUMSI Contributing Editor

Marcy Phelps, RMSLAer, active AIIPer, and founder and president of Denver-based Phelps Research, has another notch on her belt -- Contributing Editor to the Find Section of FUMSI!  Don't know FUMSI?  That's Find-Use-Manage-Share, a great philosophy for info professionals.  I first found FUMSI through its publisher, Free Pint, a fantastic British publication that's been helping me be a better researcher since library school.

So check out Marcy at FUMSI .....and congratulations!

Marcy Rodney
RMSLA Listowner

Anybody need a brain recharge? Great program at the annual meeting!

If you missed last night's chapter annual business meeting, thinking it was just a business meeting, then you missed out on a FANTASTIC presentation.  But you're in luck!  Karl Fisch, director of technology at Arapahoe High School, has some of his most well known presentations posted at The Fischbowl Presentations and his thought provoking blog at The Fisch Bowl -- hey, he's blogged us!

OK, I admit it, I went to the meeting because I always go to the business meeting and the Shirley Alldredge Lecture.  I really paid no attention to the speaker's bio.  Turns out I knew his work, and you might too -- more than 10 million people have seen this little powerpoint he worked up called Did You Know? (You'll find it at the above URLs, on Youtube, all over the place.).  I go to SLA meetings for a professional turbocharge -- well this time I got an all-over brain boos. Karl Fisch knows how to make you think, knows how to, as he puts it, start conversations.

So check out the Fischbowl! I will be getting some of his book recommendations and adding him to my RSS feeds. 

And thank you many times over to Wanda McDavid and Scott Brown for last night and the past year's worth of chapter life, and to Robert Alldredge for sponsoring.  You guys, to use technical language, simply rock.

Marcy Rodney, your chapter listowner

It's Facebook time for RMSLA

If you are not already leveraging the power of Facebook as a social networking tool to keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family and to participate in online groups (library groups, school groups, hobby groups, etc.) - now is the time to give it a try!

The RMSLA Chapter has created a RMSLA Facebook Group that anyone can join. We hope to use this social networking tool as another way for Chapter members to keep in touch, get to know each other, build relationships, collaborate on events and projects, and have fun!

Facebook is free to join and free to use.

Rocky Mountain Chapter SLA Facebook Group

If you have any questions, let me know - otherwise, see you on Facebook!

Christy
christy.confetti@sun.com
Facebook profile

Shirley Alldredge Memorial Lecture and RMSLA Annual Business Meeting

Happy New Year to the Rocky Mountain Chapter!

Please be sure to join your colleagues for our annual Shirley Alldredge Memorial Lecture and Annual Business Meeting on Thursday, January 17, 2008. Our Lecture speaker is Karl Fisch, Arapahoe High School’s Director of Technology, who will talk about how to create your own Personal Learning Network. We'll be meeting at the beautiful Denver Newspaper Agency (DNA) building in downtown Denver.

RSVP no later than Monday, January 14, 2008 to Wanda McDavid - who, by the way, is our Chapter President as of January 1! Cost is $16.00 for RMSLA Members, $13.00 for student members and $18.00 for non-members. Hope to see you there!

Scott Brown, RMSLA Past President

Call for SLA Volunteers

Stephen Abram, SLA President-Elect, has put out a call for volunteers for 2008.  The goal is to build a database of people who are interested in becoming more involved in the Association in order to ensure the widest range of participation and involvement from the membership.  The link below will take you to Stephen's description of this new process, and to the link for the form to submit for consideration.

Call For Volunteers Thanks -

Ty Webb

RMSLA Past President Ty Webb - 2008 SLA Director!

Congratulations to our own RMSLA Past-President Ty Webb, who has been elected as an SLA 2008 Director for a three-year term!

Full election results can be found in the press release, but here is a summary of the results:

2008 SLA President- Elect (three-year term): Gloria Zamora

2008 Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect (two-year term): Susan Fifer Canby, National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, USA

2008 Division Cabinet Chair-Elect (two-year term): Tom Rink, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

2008 Directors (three-year term): Deb Hunt, Exploratorium, San Francisco, California, USA; and Ty Webb, InfoWebb, Aurora, Colorado, USA

Congratulations again, Ty!

Scott Brown
President, Rocky Mountain Chapter, SLA