Silicon Valley Chapter | SLA

San Andreas Chapter Awards

At the San Andreas Chapter Annual Business Meeting on November 15th, 2006, Past President Luisa Tosi Claeys announced the recipients of the Mark Baer, Lucy Steelman, Library Partner and Author awards. President Lee Pharis also announced the recipient of the President's Award. Each of the recipients has made noteworthy contributions to our Chapter. The awards recipients are as follows:

Mark Baer Award - Leslie Fisher
Lucy Steelman Award - Eric Kristofferson
Library Partner Award - Gloria Elia
Author Award - George Plosker
President's Award - Jeanie Frasier

For full article on award recipients written by Luisa Tosi Claeys, please see the Nov/Dec 2006 FaultLine.

SLA Leadership Summit in January

SLA’s Leadership Summit is coming up in January. This year it is on the west coast, in Reno, Nevada, January 24-27, 2007. The Summit is professional development and association networking open to all SLA members, not just Board members. And there is a train that runs from the Bay Area to Reno so you don’t have to drive in the snow, but you can sit back and enjoy it. See the schedule for trains on the Amtrak Web site at http://www.amtrak.com/

This year, the two keynote speakers are Stanford University Professor Chip Heath and Ken Haycock, Director of The School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.

A full schedule, registration, and hotel information are available on the SLA website at http://www.sla.org/content/resources/leadcenter/LeadershipSummit/07leadsummit/index.cfm.

For full article written by Lee Pharis, please see the Nov/Dec 2006 FaultLine.

Board Turnover Meeting - January 11th

Hello Board Members:  I have scheduled the 2007 Turnover Board Meeting for Thursday, Jan 11 from 6-8 pm at the  USGS Library in Menlo Park. This was the night that most of us were available, thanks to those of you who might have to juggle your schedules a bit. 

This will be the turnover meeting, so members of both the 2006 Board and the 2007 Board are invited. I will be sending out an agenda in a separate e-mail in a few days.

We are still needing to fill the Vendor Relations position, so if you know of someone who might be interested, let me know.

Thanks again for volunteering your time and your good ideas!

Helen Josephine
SLA San Andreas Chapter

Event: Solo Librarians Meeting - Jan 23rd

The Solo Librarians of the San Andreas Chapter of SLA invite you to join them for their next meeting on January 23rd. Anyone with an interest in small libraries is welcome, including students and recent grads of the MLIS programs.          

Vicky Gray will be hosting the meeting at 6 P.M. on Tuesday January 23rd at the new San Mateo City Library at 55 W. Third Ave. Below is a map link with directions to the facility.

The meeting will include a short talk from the biotechnology librarian, Liz Perry, as well as a tour of the San Mateo City Library.          

We plan to share a meal before the tour. As always, the cost will be dependent on the number of attendees, but should be less than $10/ea.          

The meeting will be in the Laurel Room on the first floor of the library. What we will be having for dinner will follow.          

Those who are planning to attend need to contact Eric Kristofferson by January 20th.  Contact Eric at [email protected] or (408) 522-6697.                    

Eric Kristofferson
Patricia Parsons
San Andreas Solo Librarians

Directions to the San Mateo City Library
Vicky Gray’s direct line is 650-522-7810

Former speaker Alex Pang on Ms. Dewey

Last fall (Nov 2005) we had a program featuring speaker Alex Soojung-Kim Pang talking about his work at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and the role of libraries in the end of cyberspace. You might have even been following the IFTF's blog. I also read his personal blog and thought our members might be interested in his thoughts on Ms. Dewey, Microsoft's new search site. From Alex's blog:

Does someone searching "lung cancer" or "acquaintance rape" or "pediatric oncology" need this? Giving a program "personality" might at first glance seem like a way to make it seem more human. But if you give it the wrong personality, or a personality that is appropriate in some contexts but wildly inappropriate in others, it'll seem inhumane in a calculated, as opposed to merely mechanical, way. A program that says sarcastic things when you're looking for information about personal bankruptcy or workers' comp won't seem just irritating. It'll seem cruel.

Blog entries:
Ms. Dewey: Scariest, and Dullest, Software Agent in the Universe
Second thoughts about Ms. Dewey

Sample Post: Using Sponsors within Event Ads

This is a sample post to show you how you might fit in the sponsor ads within a post. The ad size that fits best is either the Button (125x125) or the Half Banner (234x60), both are below. Just putting the image in, and linking it to the company's website, is easily done and a great way to highlight and thank the sponsors for a particular event.

Say, if Yahoo! was using the button for their sponsorship:

And then Google wanted a half-banner sponsorship:

First Test Post

Here's where a post would go. You could post about all kinds of things that might interest our members. Posts can include text, pictures, links and just about any other content you'd like to include. We can also enable automatic posts from services like del.icio.us so content gets re-used where possible.

Posts move down the page as new posts are added. For some posts we may wish to permanently include them in the sidebar, but use of a link in a "Typelist".

Content is always improved by relevant photos. We could include photos from events, photos of speakers at events and event-sponsor logos. For posts that don't have that kind of content, services like iStockPhoto provide images for a very low cost that you can include. I added a random stock photo that our company has used in the past just to give you an idea.

In the sidebars you can include both links to other content and content itself (via incoming RSS feeds that automatically update). I think we should also reserve one sidebar for sponsors of the blog, with space for their logos.