Minnesota Chapter

3 Upcoming Events : Salon Discussions

GET TALKING: MN Chapter of SLA introduces these 3 upcoming Salon Discussions for members.
Come to one, two, or all three, they're guaranteed to be convivial!

 

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MN Salon #1: Thursday, July 30^th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

 

Ask Don’t Tell

Quick.=2 0What’s the best way to harness the expertise of employees? Traditionally, companies try expert directories and databases but the results can be mediocre. Molly Dinneen, Knowledge Discovery Services at General Mills, will share the story of how GM’s innovative “Ask” system called TechConnect has taken a fresh approach to finding internal experts.

 

For a lively discussion, some suggested reading:

1)      “Advice” search engines are gaining in popularity. The New York Times recently profiled a new “answer service” called vark.com from Aardvark. The review suggests that vark.com will surpasses Yahoo Answers, Hunch, and Bing by using Facebook and other social media sites in its methodology.  http://bit.ly/eIeTk

 

Detail on this Salon Discussion:

Thursday, July 30^th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Redstone American Grill in Minnetonka

12501 Ridgedale Dr, Minnetonka, (952-591-0000)

http://www.redstonegrill.com
BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

 

Networking
5:30pm-6pm:

Discussion

6:00pm-7pm: Molly Dinneen will share GM’s TechConnect story and will moderate a group discussion on expert systems and the trend towards “answer-and-question” search engines.

Discussion wrap-up and networking

7:00pm-7:30pm:

 

Free Event

BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

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MN Salon #2: Tuesday, August 4th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

 

Talk With a View

SLA President Gloria Zamora is a huge fan of Godin’s latest book, Tribes: Why We Need You to Lead Us. http://bit.ly/ZesLH
Let’s take a look and see what lessons we can use in our professional and personal lives. Jennifer Hahs, research analyst, at Martin Williams Advertising will moderate a group discussion of this popular business book at the charming and historic sidewalk café, Pracna, located at St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis.

 

For a lively discussion, please read Tribes or checkout this discussion guide:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/the-tribes-qa-e.html

 

Consider these questions:

How to become a leader? How can you build an active tribe? What did you find inspiring in this book or in Godin’s keynote address at the 2008 SLA Conference?20Do you have any real word examples of Tribes mentality in action?

 

Detail on this Salon Discussion:

Tuesday, August, 4^th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Pracna at St. Anthony Main. Minneapolis. http://www.saintanthonymain.com/pracna.html

BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

 

Networking
5:30pm-6pm:

Discussion

6:00pm-7pm: Jennifer Hahs from Martin Williams Advertising will moderate a discussion of Seth Godin’s Tribes.

Discussion wrap-up and networking

7:00pm-7:30pm:

 

Free Event

BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

 

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MN Salon #3: Tuesday, September 15th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

 

Survival

We all know how difficult the current economy is for everyone, including librarians. Jennifer Witt from the Northwest Area Foundation will moderate a group discussion that aims to shed light on trends in information services (embedded librarianship, anyone?), tools for job seekers, and inspirational stories of success.

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For a lively discussion, please come prepared to share something: a favorite site for staying current on info services trends, a resource for job seekers or an inspirational story.

 

Detail on this Salon Discussion:

Tuesday, September 15th from 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Joseph’s Grill, located just across the river from downtown St. Paul.
FREE parking + outside seating will make for a nice relaxed setting. http://www.josephsgrill.com/

BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

 

Networking
5:30pm-6pm:

Discussion

6:00pm-7pm: Jennifer Witt from the Northwest Area Foundation will moderate a discussion on survival strategies for the current economy.

Discussion wrap-up and networking

7:00pm-7:30pm:

 

Free Event

BYO (buy your own food & beverage)

RSVP to Jennifer Hahs / jhahs@martinwilliams.com ; 612-342-9739

IT’S PACKED WITH CONTENT: A VIRTUAL TOUR OF MEMBER BENEFITS ON THE SLA WEBSITE

The MN Chapter of the Special Libraries Association invites you to attend:

 IT’S PACKED WITH CONTENT: A VIRTUAL TOUR OF MEMBER BENEFITS ON THE SLA WEBSITE

WHEN

Wednesday, July 22, 20009

6 pm – 7 pm

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WHERE

Your desktop

COST

Totally free and open to anyone – member of SLA or not.

REGISTRATION

Details for phoning in to follow. If you can’t make this date/time, you’ll be able to download the webinar for free later from our website.

CONTACT WITH QUESTIONS

Deb Rash – drash@iconoculture.com - 612.730.1997

Kristine Spanier – kspanier@knownomads.com - 612.877.1731

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Thousands of business books at your fingertips. The entire Adobe Creative Suite – for free. Access to Atomic Learning – short, easy to use tutorials for using technology. MN Chapter Technology Chair Randi Madisen will give us a tour of the ever growing range of web 2.0 resources available from SLA -- via the web. This is a free evening seminar that you can attend from your own home or office, offered via Webex. All you will need to participate is a telephone and a computer with an internet connection. If you can’t watch it live, you can download it later to view at your leisure. You don’t have to be a member of SLA to participate but after you see everything that is available to you through a membership, you’ll want to join us immediately. And if you’re already a member, this is the time to start putting your member benefits to work for you.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Randi Madisen is the former president of the MN Chapter and currently holds the technology chair position. She is the Electronic Resources Librarian at Century College.

2013 Annual Conference Announcement

News from Kristin Foldvik, SLA Events Director:

After careful consideration, SLA has decided to hold the SLA 2013 Annual Conference in San Diego, 9-12 June.  This is a change from our previous announcement that the conference would be held in Phoenix, Arizona.

While SLA was in final discussions with Phoenix, we were notified that San Diego now had our available dates and was able to accommodate our conference.  Both cities offered great options for SLA.

San Diego offers a wider range of hotel choices, transportation options and restaurants.  As one of the nation's top destinations, San Diego is a city that knows how to entertain. From world-class attractions like the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld San Diego and LEGOLAND California, to Balboa Park boasting the largest concentration of museums west of the Mississippi, to the downtown Gaslamp Quarter, we know San Diego will provide SLA with an exceptional experience.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Kristin M. Foldvik, CMP, MBA

Events Director

SLA

331 S. Patrick Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

+1.703.647.4947

+1.703.647.4901 (fax)

www.sla.org

kfoldvik@sla.org

Twitter ID: kfoldvik

Past MN Chapter President, Harvey Johnson

Harvey Johnson passed away on June 29. He was a member of SLA and a past president of the MN chapter (1967-68). He retired from the General Mills Technical Information Services in 1986. His obituary ran in the Star Tribune, July 2 - http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/startribune/obituary.aspx?n=harvey-g-johnson&pid=129217233

Happy Birthday, SLA!

From Dav Robertson:

July 2 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of SLA.  On that day in 1909, some 20 attendees at the ALA annual conference met separately on the verandah of the Mt. Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, N.H., USA, to form SLA and adopt a constitution that defined the "Object" as follows:

  "The object of this Association  is to promote the interests of the commercial, industrial, technical, civic, municipal and legislative reference libraries, the special departments of public libraries, universities, welfare associations, and business organizations."

(For more on the founding of SLA, see Guy St. Clair's book SLA at 100, published by SLA for the Centennial.)

What were the founders thinking when they chose to use the word "Special" in the name of SLA?  From John Cotton Dana's comments we know that the name was casually chosen in that the members were all "doing some special work in libraries."  We also know that the founders wanted the new association to be inclusive, and in fact, the association grew rapidly as information pioneers in a variety of settings signed up.

Now that we are 100, we are reconsidering the name of our association and the direction to take in recruiting new members.  We have the evidence provided to us by the Alignment Project research, which shows that "special" does not resonate with those we serve.  We have the evidence which shows that we can recruit information professionals who work outside of "special libraries."

Upon the occasion of our centennial, this is precisely the time when we should be acting on these issues.  Urge your colleagues to discuss the findings of the Alignment Project and what steps SLA should take to promote the interests of information professionals in the 21st Century.  Be prepared to vote on a name change later this Centennial Year.  Align in '09.

All the best,

Dav Robertson, Chair

SLA Centennial Commission

Pictures from SLA 2009 Annual Conference in Washington D.C.

Our two rising stars - Julie Fleischhacker and Margaret Ostrander each pictured with SLA President Gloria Zamora.

Karen Stauber, Chair of the SAAAC Committee and Past Chapter President, presenting the student group award to Erin Perry, Co-President of the St. Kate's SLA Student Group.

Kristine Spanier, MN Chapter President and Deb Rash, President-Elect at the Leadership Development Institute.

Proposed Division Petition

Posted on behalf of Tom Rink, Division Cabinet Chair:

At the SLA Annual Conference, the SLA members interested in creating a new SLA Taxonomy Division gained approval to circulate a petition to identify members for the proposed division, which will focus on ways to organize and structure information so that content is accessible and useful.

The proposed Taxonomy Division would offer a practical context for exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning, creating, maintaining and using taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures.

To learn more or to sign the petition agreeing to join this new division, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6tJ5CLQkMDsBnVSKgCFHxw_3d_3d.

You must be a current SLA member to sign the petition.

Contact Margie Hlava (mhlava@accessinn.com) or Janice Keeler
(jkeelersla@sbcglobal.net) for more information or to volunteer to help get this division started.

Tom Rink
Division Cabinet Chair

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Tom Rink
Instruction Librarian
Northeastern State University - Broken Arrow Campus 3100 East New Orleans Street Broken Arrow, OK 74014
phone: 918-449-6457
fax: 918-449-6454
email: rink@nsuok.edu
webpage: http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~rink/
blog: http://guncarryinglibrarian.wordpress.com

Conference Handouts Available

If you're looking for any of the handouts from the conference, whether you were able to make it or not, take a look here:

http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2009/Conference/handouts/index.cfm

Value, Value, Value: Posting by Jen Hahs, Recipient of SLA MN Conference Grant

Of the sessions I attended at this year's SLA Conference, two stand out as particularly useful:

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Annual Reports: Reading and Interpreting Company Financials (6/16)

 

Creating Groupies: How to Add Value, Make Yourself Irreplaceable & Beat the Pants Off Google (6/17)

 

The above presentations were by Mary Ellen Bates. Yeah, I know, what you’re thinking: Bates is so overexposed at SLA we could start calling it the MEB conference. Yes, she presents a lot but the sessions I attended were excellent. Bates was fresh, insightful, and her presentation style is enjoyable to listen to. 

Mary Ellen’s conference presentations are available for download at BatesInfo.com/SLA2009. 

Here are some takeaways that might interest the Chapter:

 

SEC Filings session:

• -    Analyst conference calls are a potentially rich resource for company intelligence. They usually aren’t available as transcripts so you have to listen to them to pull out the gems. 
• -       SEC is coming out with an interactive tool called IDEA (Interactive Data Electronic).http://idea.sec.gov/
• -       8-K filings are “for anything significant” and have to be filed promptly with the SEC. Journalists will monitor 8-Ks via RSS to be the first to know breaking company news.

Creating Groupies:

-      When thinking about your library and research services; stop selling features and start communicating benefits. For example, instead of touting that you subscribe to X number of databases, convey that you “..turn information into actionable, reliable intelligence.” Most of us have been doing this for years but the presentation was a nice recap of why having a benefits mindset is so important. 
 

-      If you do a learning session (Bates suggests dropping ‘training’ from your lexicon) make it fun and be sure to use a catchy title. Stay clear of libranese type language. (Newsflash: no one cares!)

These are just two nuggets from the Creating Groupies session but Bates offered several other ideas for how to embrace a values mindset. I’m still thinking on this session and am eager to try out some of her recommended tactics.

Sidenote: the “Creating Groupies” session would be a great a topic of discussion for our MN SALON Series. Any takers? Let me know and I’ll set up a session ASAP while ideas are still fresh.

 

Cheers,

Jen Hahs

"Yes, Jill, I Think It's Time For A Name Change"

Last week at SLA's Leadership Development Institute that was held before the main conference started, CEO Janice Lachance and President Gloria Zamora again presented findings from the massive Alignment Project. Janice stated that when the project began it was with the intent of a "game change" and not a "name change." However, the findings of the research are clear: the word "libraries" in our association name means nothing to users of our services and the C-level employees in our organizations. It's also limiting - we're losing out on potential members who are turned off by the name. Our membership figures have been decreasing regularly for a decade. If we don't do something soon, the association will be further weakened by the loss of income. And this is not to mention the potential knowledge we can gain by expanding our personal networks with members outside of traditional special libraries (an oxymoron for sure). When neither Janice nor Gloria said anything about needing to change the name, our Past-President Jill Strand finally asked the question that needed to be asked: Is it time again to look at changing the name of our association? And Janice answered (after reiterating some of the information above), "Yes, Jill, I think it's time for a name change." 

So this is it, Minnesota. As we've said before, you're going to be hearing a lot more about the Alignment Project. You'll also be getting an online tool kit so that you can use the findings for yourself in your organization. And now is the time to think positively about what a name change can do for all of us. Have any ideas to put forth? Feel free to add them to our comments section. We can send a statement to headquarters on behalf of Minnesota.