DSOL Conference Blog

Early Bird Registration Ends Today! Check out the program and sign up.

Yes, it's true, early bird registration for this year's Annual gathering closes today.  If you were debating whether or not to go to the conference, check out this year's Solo Division lineup - it's sure to make you want to attend!

Sunday, 06/13/10
12:00-1:30pm Solo Librarians Division Board Meeting. ALL INVITED!

Monday, 06/14/10
10:00-11:30am Practical Guide to a User-Focused Digital Library. This session elaborates on the various aspects of building, managing, and promoting a digital library including tools to build and evaluate a digital library, digital content licensing, and tips on how to promote the use of this content. (Speaker Qin Zhu). Co-sponsored by DIT.

2:00-3:30pm SPOTLIGHT SESSION: Brand You and Web 2.0. Mary Ellen Bates: How do you manage your online profiles, establish your expertise and express yourself on the web, without compromising you reputation? This session looks at how info pros can make use of the social web to build their professional networks, establish their credibility and share their expertise, without compromising their professional reputation.

4:00-5:30pm Success Stories of Solos. Original session format back by popular demand! Success is measured in a variety of ways. In this roundtable discussion panelists share their success stories in solo librarianship. Come find out how others have broken down walls, created innovative services and more! Share your own story. Attendee discussion and participation encouraged. Moderated by Patrick Clapp

8:00-10:00pm. Solo Librarians Division Open House. Did you ever find yourself asking, "am I a Solo Librarian?" Or, "I have some staff, am I still a Solo?" To answer these questions and more join the Solo Librarians Division to unravel the mysteries of the Solo Librarian. Meet new friends and make new ones while you enjoy good food and beverages. All are welcome to this great networking event!

Tuesday, 06/15/10
10:00-11:30am Solo Librarians 3rd Annual Gerry Hurley Memorial Leadership Session. Leadership and Influence: Building Capacity for Change. Weaving together research from advocacy, collaboration, influence and leadership, Ken Haycock will provide a practical yet evidence-based approach to building capacity for change and improvement in your organization.

12:00-1:30pm Solo Librarians Division Business Meeting and Luncheon. The Solo Board of Directors will share news of the past year, as well as plans for the next year, with members and guests.

8:00-10:00pm. Joint Reception with the Petroleum & Energy Resources, Government, and Transportation Divisions @ Mulates—“The Original Cajun”Check them out a www.mulates.com.

Wednesday, 06/16/10
10:00-11:30am Taxonomy Made Easy. An Introduction to Taxonomies for the Accidental Taxonomist This session will provide an overview of taxonomies and tools to help you get started. Speaker Heather Hedden. Co-sponsored by DTAXO.

--Julie

The early bird gets the, um... cheaper worm?

Only three months to go before the conference starts!

If you haven't yet registered for SLA 2010, you may want to think about doing so before April 2nd, which is when the early bird registration rate ends.  Only $445, instead of $625 afterwards.

Register, check out the conference planner, and more at http://www.sla.org/neworleans2010.

-Julie

It begins!

The latest from our Chair...

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1:05 p.m. EST

I feel really excited about this year and I can’t wait to meet so many new people. I am still home, but headed down to DC from NYC within the hour. I realized today that this is the first time I ever rented a car and I felt like I was 18 being handed the keys to my Mom’s car for the first time! My car is a 1988 Honda with 140,000+ miles and dead at the moment and so what a thrill it is to ride in something without rust! I’m off to a very late start—perils of being on my own timetable, but hope to hit the Renaissance before dark. I’ll be seeing one or 2 Solos tonight, but I better make it an early night to make sure everything is set for our 8am CE course, taught by our very own Liz from Dialog.

More soon!

Hildy

SLA @ 100 stimulus... fading...

If you haven't yet registered for the upcoming Annual Conference, you only have 2 more days before the $45 stimulus discount disappears forever and ever!  That's right - after January 31, you will be stuck paying the regular old early bird price.  Which is still less expensive than the standard price, but who wouldn't want to save $45?

Head to http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2009/registration/index.cfm to register online.  Don't forget to add the Solo Business Meeting and Lunch to your registration, as well as ticket #205 - Best Practices for Information Services: Achieving Operational Excellence with instructor Liz Blankson-Hermans from Dialog, the Division's CE course on Saturday, June 13th, from 8 until 12.

--Julie

Highlights from the SLA Leadership Summit

While I'm sure that Hildy Dworkin, our Solo chair, attended / saw / participated in far too many things to list on this humble blog, here are a few of the highlights from the most recent SLA Leadership Summit:

• Click University: Self-paced seminars: these live courses and replays are now FREE! Yes, the $199 fee has been eliminated. (Note that there is still a fee for certificate programs and other University courses.)

• SLA membership is $35 for those earning $18,000 and less. Read the full press release: http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/pressroom/pressrelease/08pr/pr2822.cfm.

• Research findings from the SLA Alignment Project will be posted on the SLA website very soon. The findings presented at the summit generated a lot of positive excitement from conference attendees. For background info on the project see http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/alignment/index.cfm.

And of course, like everyone else, SLA is finding ways to cope with today's current economic "challenges" - Information Outlook will now be published 8 times a year, and there will be no salary survey this year.  Also, sadly, SLA staff will not be receiving any salary increases, which is all the more reason to show your appreciation for everything that they do in other creative ways when you see them at the upcoming Annual Conference.

If you attended the Summit and have stories to share, please respond to this post!

--Julie

SLA 2009: Solo Division Conference Sessions

Just in from Hildy Dworkin, our intrepid Chair, here is the latest list of Solo Division conference sessions:

Saturday, June 13, 2009

8:00AM - 12:00PM

CE Course (Ticketed event)

Best Practices for Information Services: Achieving Operational Excellence

Instructor: Liz.Blankson-Hermans from Dialog

 

Sunday, June 14, 2009

12:00PM - 1:30PM

Solo Librarians Division Board Meeting (open to all members)

 

Monday, June 15, 2009

9:00AM - 10:30AM

Diversity in Leadership: Generation X--The Changing Paradigm in a Knowledge-Based Society

Solo Librarians Division's 2nd Annual Gerry Hurley Memorial Leadership Session

 

1:30PM - 3:30PM: Spotlight Session!

How Do You Move Up the Ladder if There Is No Ladder to Climb?

 

3:30PM - 5:00PM

The New Face of the Special Librarian: Embedded Librarians

 

8:00PM - 10:00PM

Solo Librarians Division Open House

 

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

11:30AM - 1:00PM

Solo Librarians Division Annual Business Meeting & Luncheon (Ticketed event)

 

1:30PM - 3:00PM

Preparedness for Info Pros: Lessons Learned from Recent Disasters

 

8:00PM - 10:00PM

Joint Open House w/ Government and Petroleum & Energy Resources

 

Wednesday, June 17, 2009: Spotlight Session!

8:30AM - 10:00AM

Mary Ellen Bates: Creating Groupies: How to add value, make yourself irreplaceable and beat the pants off Google

Mark your calendars!

--Julie

Where and When?

While the room assignments and locations for Solo / Solo-relevant activities at SLA 2009 haven't been pinned down quite yet, I'll post them here as soon as I get them.  Please post event notices to the Solo listserv, or send me a message at snyder <underscore> julie <at> shure dot com.

--Julie

Let the Registration Begin!!!

You've probably seen the e-mail by now - registration for SLA 2009 is open, and the first 100 people to sign up will receive the benefit of the SLA Stimulus Plan, $100 off!

Oh, wait.  If you didn't act within the hour of receiving that message, you are out of luck.  Or are you?

If you register before January 31, 2009, and use the super-special SLA Stimulus Plan Part 2 offer, you can save $45 off of the Member Early Bird registration price.

Check your e-mail, and register soon.  It's not like you would ever want to miss the annual conference, but this is the 100th anniversary conference, and it promises to be extra fantastic.

--Julie

The horror!

We're approaching the next milestone in our march towards the annual conference... Early bird registration for members ends on the 1st of April, a scant few days away.  Don't miss this opportunity to save $$$ on your registration costs!

As presenters and as attendees, I'm sure that we've all experienced our share of conference horror stories.  For better or for worse, this is not limited to the world of special libraries.  Case in point - an editorial article on a regional conference from the blog Inside Higher Ed, "Attending a Conference, Looking for an Exit."  Some adjectives used to describe sessions at academic conferences are "muffled," "interiorized," "shrunken."  At the other end of the spectrum, the author described other sessions as "confident," "resonant," "expansive."  Perhaps discussion chairs don't show up on time, or at all.  Sometimes, there's no audience.  Or maybe you have a feeling that you've heard what the presenter's saying before...when they gave the same presentation a couple of years ago.  While here in libraryland we are perhaps a little less subject to the stringent tenure requirements and vicissitudes of the professorial life that bring about these kinds of issues, surely we've all had similar experiences that we are not anxious to repeat, either as a participant or as one who inflicts this special pain on others.

Steering clear of any details that might identify people or places, what have you seen that you do not wish to see again, and what advice do you have to give to presenters and attendees to continue to make our annual conference a valuable and positive experience?  (one that can be had at a discounted price until April 1st!)

How will you keep track of it all?

It's been pretty quiet around this blog for a while, but as the new Solo Division blogmaster (mistress?), I'm hoping to change that... With the Annual Conference sneaking up more quickly than we might like to think, I'd like to resurrect this forum for discussion, creating a Solo-centric companion to the general Seattle conference wiki.

As I was reading through my regular pile of daily e-mail, I came across a CNET blog posting on Twitter and its presence at SXSW entitled "At SXSWi, the new Twitter is ... Twitter." You can read the whole posting yourself at http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9890396-52.html, but the gist of it is that this communication tool has proven itself to be more than a passing fad and was put to very good use at this conference - it kept people who were spread out all over Austin connected and aware of events, both spontaneous and planned, and it provided a forum for instant reviews of sessions. One particular quote that stood out for me was,

"Basically, I think a lot of people must be wondering how they managed to get through SXSWi before Twitter came along. It's like trying to imagine the days when there was no email."

At our own SLA conferences, inevitably there are 17 sessions that you would like to attend in the space of 3 hours, there are countless networking events, things sell out and spaces open up, someone decides that it might be nice to go out to dinner... Twitter is one way to keep on top of things. What other tools are you planning to use in order to get the most out of your conference experience?

--Julie