The Newsletter of the Virginia Chapter of SLA Winter 2008, Volume 38, Number 3President’s Message
by Karen King, University of VirginiaGreetings from Charlottesville! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that your new year is off to a good start. The SLA Leadership Summit will be taking place in Louisville Kentucky this week. The conference allows SLA chapters and divisions leaders to get together to share ideas, best practices, and learn about SLA initiatives. Janet Holly and I will be spending a good deal of the time planning for our chapter’s upcoming year. My commitment as president is to offer opportunities for our members to grow in professional knowledge and skills while developing a strong network of colleague friends statewide.
Janet Holly will be serving as the Vice President Elect and Program Chair for 2008. She will be planning and scheduling the programs for the upcoming year. It is our plan to make it easy for members to get involved in program planning roles both large and small this year. A more involved opportunity would include hosting a program or coordinating catering for meals. Other opportunities would require a smaller time commitment such as; helping with creating registration forms, greeting members, or handing out name tags at the beginning of meetings.
One of the greatest challenges of our chapter is the distance between our members. With a focus on this challenge the board will also be hosting several “Dine Arounds” throughout the year. “Dine Arounds” are local dinners that are planned to allow members the opportunity to informally get together and network with colleagues in their area. It is our hope that the “Dine Arounds” will allow members who are not able to travel to all of the meetings the opportunity to participate in a local VASLA events.
Networking continues to be one of the best reasons to belong to our professional organization. I find that often it is through conversations with fellow librarians that I arrive at my best ideas and strategies for my library. It is also were I can find comfort in the midst of challenging work situations. It is my hope as president this year that I can continue to support you in the development of your professional network.
I look forward to seeing you at our next VASLA event.
SARC IV, February 27 – 29, 2008 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Surreal Landscape: Information Professionals Mastering the Challenges of Time & Space. Visit site: http://units.sla.org/regconf/sarc4/index.html
Winter Program Summary
Cultivating Possibilities: Information Sharing & Strategies for Tomorrow’s Libraries
review by Megan Nunemaker, National Radio Astronomy ObservatoryLibrarians are a friendly, helpful group. We share resources from our collections to patrons at other institutions, and will go to amazing lengths to get our patrons the information they need. How will the processes we use to get information to patrons change in the coming years, and who will lead this change?
Cyril Oberlander, Director of Interlibrary Services at the University of Virginia (UVA) shared his views on this topic with VASLA members on December 17, 2007. Cyril leads five departments at UVA: ILL borrowing, Instructional Scanning Services, the Ivy shelving facility, Lending/Retrieval, and LEO (faculty departmental document delivery services).
He shared many interesting facts with us, including
- Librarians can be proud of the fact that we share 51,000 items per day using OCLC, but these numbers hardly compare to the five million sessions per day in EBSCO databases. (Let’s be sure we let our patrons know that libraries are providing access to these materials as well; too often this goes unadvertised.)
- Wikipedia is currently the top educational website for individuals looking for reference information! What role will librarians play in mediating the information on Wikipedia? Remember, we can edit Wikipedia entries; Cyril encouraged attendees to do just that, and to start with the entry for Library.
- How do we and how should we, or will we, provide information to our patrons if we do not own the information. Libraries already participate in ILL and document delivery of photocopies, but if an item can be purchased on Amazon.com and delivered to a patron for less than what it will cost the library to acquire and process that item, do we really want it back?
- How do we want our library websites to evolve, and what type of content should we provide? Cyril recommends librarians look to sites such as the BBC and PBS for examples.
What are your thoughts on information resource sharing? Is your library providing services in a unique way? Please share your ideas with us; you may see them highlighted in a future newsletter!
SEND US YOUR NEWS!!
Have you: Attended a seminar? Published an article? Received an award? Been elected or appointed to an office or committee? Traveled out of the state or country?
TELL US ABOUT IT! WE WANT TO HEAR WHAT OUR MEMBERS ARE DOING!
Be sure to tell us the 5 Ws and the H:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How
Also please provide us your contact information & send your news to:
Megan Nunemaker
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
mnunemak@nrao.edu
Karen King, President
University of Virginia
marshk@darden.virginia.eduJanet Holly, President-Elect
Virginia Military Institute
hollyjs@vmi.eduKathryn Soule, Past-President
University of Virginia
soule@virginia.eduMegan Nunemaker, Secretary
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
mnunemak@nrao.edu
Carla Lee, Treasurer
University of Virginia
carlalee@virginia.eduLorraine Sitler, Director
UNOS
sitlerlc@unos.orgBecky Carvajal, Director
GlaxoSmithKline
carvajal6@cox.net