Are you interested in exploring influential ideas and sharing your insights with fellow information professionals?

Participate in our DC/SLA Book Club!

Created in 2002, our Chapter’s club meets quarterly to discuss current, thought-provoking books of wide interest to our professional community. The goal of our discussions is to highlight each book’s unique points and useful takeaways through a lively exchange of ideas.

Prior to each meeting, participants nominate recent, compelling books, and vote for the title they would like to discuss at the next gathering. Books we have read in the last year include: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture; Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books; Freakonomics; The World is Flat; and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Since 2005, we have met at diverse Metro-accessible restaurants recommended by our participants.

Next Book Club Meeting:

Date and Time: July 2008, day to be announced

Book: Send suggestions: We will vote on April 25th

Meeting Location: TBA

Meeting Hosted by: Layla Voll

Please RSVP: Layla_Voll@hotmail.com or 202-877-5296.

In April, the book club discussed Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, a best-selling book, the inspiration for a PBS series, and even the subject of its own Wikipedia article.

Covering 10,000 years of human history and all seven continents, Guns, Germs, and Steel takes a look at the factors which affected human development all over the world, from the food we eat to the germs we harbor, and the book club discussion ranged from prehistoric crop yields and domesticated animals to the future of farming in modern Montana and the global information society.

Our next meeting will be in July, and anyone is welcome to join us: you do not need to have come to a meeting before, or even to be member of SLA. Suggestions for books are always welcomed: please contact Layla Voll with any questions or recommendations.

Additional Questions? Contact Layla Voll (Layla_Voll@hotmail.com)

Past Book Selections:

April 7, 2008. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Jan. 16, 2008. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Oct. 1, 2007. Library 2.0 and Beyond: Innovative Technologies and Tomorrow's User edited by Nancy Courtney.

July 11, 2007. Wikinomics : How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

April 23, 2007 . Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. 

January 11, 2007 . Thinking for a Living by Thomas Davenport. October 16, 2006 . The Search by John Bagatelle.

July 19, 2006. Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.

April 20, 2006. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

January 12, 2006. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman.

October 6, 2005. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan,

May 19, 2005. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, el. al

September 2004 Good Business: Leadership, Flow & the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

July, 2004. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman.

May 13, 2004 Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessing

March 25, 2004. Why Don’t You Want What I Want? How to Win Support for Your Ideas without Hard Sell, Manipulation, or Power Plays by Rick Mauer.

January 22, 2004. When Generations Collide by Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman

November 13, 2003. Nothing to Fear: Lessons in Leadership from FDR by Alan Axelrod

October 2, 2003. Alexander the Great’s Art of Strategy by Partha Bose

May 8, 2003.  Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet by Anne Mintz and Steve Forbes.

March, 2003. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott.

January 16, 2003.  Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by James C. Collins. 

November 7, 2002. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell.

September 19, 2002. The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writing on Management by Peter Drucker.