Rocky Mountain Chapter SLA Blog

2009 Leadership Summit Highlights

In January Shannon O’Grady and I attend the SLA Leadership Summit in Savannah, Georgia. Below are some of the major news items that came up at the summit to pass on to our chapter. Please let me know if you have any questions about the below items.

1. Anyone with an income below $18,000 can join SLA for a fee of $35.00.
2. ClickU Live sessions will now be FREE, as will the replays of these sessions.
3. SLA will offer discounts on CI certificates and others, as well as on courses at iSchools.
4. There will be fewer Information Outlooks published
5. A new council is being created for new information professionals who are in the first five years of their career

Thanks

Manuel Santos
msantos@international.edu

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

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

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

2007 Annual Business Meeting

Kathy Jackson and Washington Group International graciously hosted this meeting, which included our Annual Business Meeting and a terrific presentation by Marcy Phelps (RMSLA member and owner of Phelps Research) on "Power Networking for Introverts".

We started off the evening with a light dinner and connecting and reconnecting with colleagues. As we began the Chapter Annual Business Meeting, Ty Webb, who is moving into the Past President role, thanked our outgoing Board members and reviewed some of the great events we've had this year (including our Chapter's 55th anniversary and our Membership meeting with Mary Ellen Bates).

Kathleen Rainwater then presented Ty with a check for $1000 for Chapter conference expenses, a tremendously generous gift from RMSLA member Pat Wagner and Pattern Research. Thank you, Pat!

Scott Brown, Chapter President for 2007, then announced two new Chairs coming into office: Michelle Rainbolt, who will be taking over Academic Relations and the Rebecca Jackson Scholarship process, and Barbara Verble, who will be taking on the Membership role. He also listed the officers of the Student Chapter, and talked about a program in the works to connect special librarians with students, so that students can "shadow" special librarians for two to four hours. Look for more details on this soon!

Wanda McDavid, our new President-Elect, then talked about some upcoming events (including the annual dinearounds and the CoALL Spotlight event), and introduced the evening's speaker, Marcy Phelps.

POWER Networking

Marcy Phelps gave a fabulous presentation on "Power Networking for Introverts" at our annual meeting last week.  Even an old networking pro like me learned a few things!  If you would like a copy of the handouts, contact  Marcy Phelps at mphelps@phelpsresearch.com?

Marcy's talk encouraged me to get OUT of my office and attend all those company events like retirement parties and service award parties and ask someone "So, what are you working on now?"

Simple, right?  Yes, but it is also outside of my comfort zone - and I needed the nudge to get moving.

How about the rest of you that attended the meeting?  What nugget of inspiration did you take home with you?

Kathleen Rainwater

Mary Ellen Bates and Web 2.0

Mary Ellen Bates always puts on a good show, and her presentation last night was no exception. It is impossible to do her any justice in an attempt to summarize her comments, but it's important for us to share information with those RMSLA members beyond the greater Denver area who could not attend, so here goes... Web 2.0 is collaborative and dynamic, driven by the power of collective intelligence and dependant on trusting the community. Examples are numerous -- wikis, mashups, social networking sites and social bookmarking, etc. The key concept is user participation. Imagine your library users, for example, adding identifiers to your OPAC by tagging. Sure, there's no authority control, but that can be both a bad thing and a good thing. Improvements in retrievability could be worth it...Mary Ellen's presentations are always filled with wonderful, intriguing sites to check. Have fun with these, just a few from her talk: Digg.com, Rollyo.com, LibraryThing.com.

Ty Webb

2006 Shirley Alldredge Memorial Lecture

Each year, Robert Alldredge sponsors a lecture in memory of his wife, Shirley Alldredge, a long-time, active member of RMSLA.  This year's lecture was delivered by Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute.  His basic theme was that "the future determines the present."  What we decide we want to happen in our future determines what we do today.

 

 

Thomas Frey discusses the future with Robert Alldredge at the 2006 Shirley Alldredge Memorial Lecture

Rebecca Jackson Scholarship Fundraiser

The Rebecca Jackson Scholarship fundraiser was a big success!  Academic Relations Chair, Linda Van Wert, has sent a message to the list about the funds that were raised.

We gathered in Marcy Dunning's backyard, but had a quick lesson in contingency planning when the skies actually delivered on their threat of rain.  The crowd worked well together, moving everything quickly into Marcy's red-brick garage.  The new location created a funky, convivial atmosphere.  That, and the wine, encouraged people to participate in some competitive bidding for items in the silent auction.

We were honored to have Rebecca Jackson's sister with us.  Mary Ann Chaffin joined us in recognizing all of the students helped in person by Rebecca, and all those helped by scholarships in her name.

Those who were unable to attend the event can make a contribution to the scholarship fund by sending a check to the chapter treasurer.

Make your check out to RMSLA, write "Scholarship Fund" in the memo field, and mail it to:

Pamela Gross
Research Center M/S A109
IHS/Global Engineering Documents
15 Inverness Way E *
Englewood, CO 80112 USA

Thank you -

Ty Webb

SLA 2006 Conference: Kudos to Kathleen Rainwater

Kudos to Kathleen Rainwater and her entire team for the great job they have done on the Denver booth here in Baltimore. They are building a lot of excitement about coming to the 2007 conference!

Ty Webb