San Andreas Chapter President Leslie Fisher noted the fortuitous number of attendees, thanked DIALOG for sponsoring the event and Ken Haycock, Professor and Director of the School of Library and Information Science at San jose State University, for the 100th anniversary cake, and observed a number of anniversaries or near anniversaries. 2009 is the 85th anniversary of the founding of the San Francisco Chapter as well as the 100th anniversary of the founding of SLA, and 2010 will be the 30th anniversary of the founding of the San Andreas Chapter, which split off from the San Francisco Chapter in 1980. She also thanked the Communications Committee for their efforts so far. Leslie also noted that there is a second Career Agility event the morning of June 4th.
Sandy Malloy, the president of the San Francisco Chapter, thanked the San Andreas Chapter, and Leslie in particular, for putting on the event. The next event for the San Francisco Chapter is Maplight at the UC Berkeley faculty club.
Next up was Cindy Romaine of Romainiacs Intelligence Research, who is running for President-Elect of SLA International. Cindy pointed out we are part of a noble profession--at a time when people don’t trust public institutions, they do trust libraries. US News & World Report listed librarians as one of the top jobs of the future. SLA can soak up 20 times the anxiety going on in the profession, like chamois (a prop Cindy had) can soak up 20 times its weight in water. She also compared us to the Verizon guy, people coming (rappelling) to each others’ service and providing a strong and robust network. The next step for the profession: we have to get future-ready. Cindy asked what are the tools, constructs, competencies we need and mentioned that she uses and has accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
After a brief interlude for anniversary cake, a panel moderated by Bill Fisher and consisting of Richard Geiger, Cindy Hill, Libby Trudell and Deb Hunt gave their quick thoughts on where the profession was headed and engaged the audience. Themes included user focus, differing generational attitudes towards privacy, staying current on new technologies and how librarians should brand themselves. Part of the panel discussion included presenting videos from the Strategic Alignment Project. SLA members and, in at least one case, a professional actress read statements and the reactions of information users (C-level executives) and information providers were tracked in real-time.
Questions posed by Chapter members included how to convey our value to middle management who might oversee expenses but not directly use our services or see the value we provide, different terms for the people we work for (collaborators, decision makers and team members were all proposed) and a lively discussion of differing generational attitudes towards privacy and how to reach out to younger people and how to be more inclusive.
Photos are forthcoming!
Deb Hunt threw out a challenge to all of us to try out at least one of the following services by June 1, saying, "You'll be glad you invested the time in yourself and added new skills to your toolbox."
SLA wiki home: http://wiki.sla.org/dashboard.action
(be sure to create a log in that will be good for all wiki pages)
23 Things: http://tinyurl.com/ok4k5v
Innovation Lab (which includes links to all the spaces below): http://www.sla.org/innovate/
Atomic Learning
http://www.sla.org/innovate/atomic.cfm
Enter the user name: slastudent and the password: slastudent
Leadership & Management and KM Library: http://sla.learn.com/learncenter.asp?page=202
execuBooks: http://sla.learn.com/learncenter.asp?page=156
Deborah Hunt
Exploratorium http://www.exploratorium.edu
Steven Kaye
Novarica
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