Report from the General Leadership Summit
by Betty Lou Hicks, Hanson Professional Services, Inc., SLA TD division chair

Bob Sweet and I attended this meeting in Tampa, Florida from January 26 through January 29. The keynote speaker was Gary Heil from the Center for Innovative Leadership (www.cfil.com) .

Total attendance at the summit was 244.

The candidates for National Office spoke at the luncheon on Thursday. By now you should have your official ballot. Remember we have one of our own members, Robert Sarmiento, running for a seat on the Board. Be sure to vote.

SLA is developing an online learning environment, which you’ll be hearing more about this Spring and Summer. It will provide SLA members with many opportunities for education and professional development, such as earning advanced degrees from participating universities, continuing education courses, virtual seminars, leadership/management training, etc.

There are two new Divisions within SLA, Competitive Intelligence and Government Information.

The Association is moving its current governance year, July1 – June 30, to coincide with the fiscal year, January 1 – December 31. This change takes effect with the officers elected for the 2005-2006 term. The officers will actually serve until the end of 2006. Officers will be elected in the Fall and will need to plan to attend the January Leadership Summit for official training. The SLA Annual Conference will continue to be held in the June timeframe.

The SLA Finance Committee presented a proposed change to the membership dues structure. After much discussion, the Joint Cabinet (Chapter and Division Cabinets) recommended to the Board of Directors that more work and review needed to be done before proceeding further. The biggest problem with the proposed dues structure was it does not provide a category for foreign members who have very minimal salaries.

I was not able to stay for the Board of Directors meeting on Saturday, but heard that the following action was taken: the Board referred the dues restructuring proposal back to the Finance Committee; the Board passed that two votes on SLA Bylaws be taken by the membership at the Toronto conference: 1) to allow electronic voting of the membership (it seems in consultation with counsel this may now be possible at the Association level), and 2) to remove the 12% cap on dues increases. Everyone will need to be sure and attend the Business Meeting on Wednesday at the National Convention to vote on these issues.

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Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network: Making Progress
by Bob Sweet, Head, UMTRI Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

What’s new for the Midwest Transportation Knowledge Network (MTKN)? We held our fourth annual meeting, October 22-23, 2004, in happy, hospitable Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Much of the meeting had us discussing ways to formalize MTKN and what we’d like to accomplish in the coming year.

I’ll just list, in bulleted form, some of the highlights of the meeting, milestones since the 2003 meeting, and what’s keeping us busy these days.

• The MTKN website (http://www.mtkn.org) was launched in March 2004. This coincided with the unveiling of TLCat. (see the TLCat link on the MTKN home page).
  
• “Working Smarter,” an online tutorial was developed and presented several times in 2004 in conjunction with the National Transportation Library (NTL) and the National Highway Institute.
  
• MTKN was instrumental in strengthening libraries at the state DOTs of Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri. We’re in the process of lobbying the Illinois DOT to keep its library.
  
• We have been supporting and promoting the Transportation Library Connectivity pooled fund study, led by Wisconsin DOT. So far, Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, and Ohio are participating (see http://www.pooledfund.org/projectdetails.asp?id=910&status=1). The project is seeking additional participants, and we encourage transportation librarians to recommend the project to their organizations.
  
• We are incorporated! And we approved (and improved) our bylaws and an ILL agreement.
  
• One of our aims is to help develop networks in other regions. Jerry Baldwin of the Minnesota DOT is the MTKN contact for AASHTO’s west region, Marie Manthe of the Kansas DOT is the one to call if you’re in the northeast region, and Bob Sweet of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is covering the south.
  
• Developing marketing and training tools is an ongoing endeavor.
  
• Mentoring librarians new to the profession or to the transportation field is another way we aim to add value.
  
• We’re continuing to look for opportunities to develop partnerships with other transportation organizations, such as FHWA’s Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP), AASHTO, and others.
  
• We will play a part in planning the second International Technology Transfer Conference, which will be held in the summer of 2006.
  

That’s it in a nutshell or two. Please visit the MTKN website, and if you have any questions about what I’ve only skimpily sketched out here, contact any MTKN member. You’ll find all our contact information at www.mtkn.org.

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Membership News

New members of the Transportation Division

Oregon Dept. Of Transportation
Library & Info Resource
355 Capitol St NE
Salem, Oregon 97301

Ms. Julia C. Daniel
University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute
2910 Baxter Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2150
jcdaniel@umich.edu

Ms. A Candace Goss
Butzel Long Library
150 W Jefferson Ave
Ste 900
Detroit, MI 48226-4415
goss@butzel.com

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