As Fellow, you have been recognized for your work to enhance the SLA and the profession. I always feel that as Fellows, we are standing on shoulders of giants. Who within the profession was the first to inspire you?

Nora Paul, whom I met in 1999 when I took her inspirational new media and library leadership course at Maastricht University. She was the first person I met in the library world who realised what a big change was about to happen to us thanks to new technology. She outlined the list of role swaps we were about to undertake as news librarians! Amazing how right she was:

• From waitresses to tour guides – moving from serving up information to pre-packaging it, and adopting a more pro-active role.
• From transactional to transformational – from do you have … to helping out in production/news areas.
• From clerks to coaches – more for news librarians, but still relevant for others – from keepers of dusty files to consultants helping other organise information.
• From I have it, to I know who has it – encourage the practice of sharing and improving knowledge.
• From supplicant to pitchman – from I’m not worthy, can I serve you? To come here, got stuff to offer, more confident about what we can offer.

If you think about the future of our profession – what keeps you awake at night and why?

I worry about our ability to communicate – specifically enabling members to converse in appropriate vocabulary with users and bosses. We’re not great at explaining what we do in words that resonate with users and bosses and I’d like us to change that. Then perhaps our skill set and experience will be valued more appropriately.

When it comes to innovation, a lot of companies are trying to stay ahead of the competition by disrupting themselves from the inside out. For example, Netflix disrupted their profitable DVD mail order business by starting a movie streaming service via the Internet. Do you have ideas how information professionals could start disruptive innovation in their organizations?

By going out of our comfort zone and getting involved in discussions on innovation within our organisations, because info people occupy a neutral, holistic position in organisations. We know so much about what everyone is doing and current and future trends in our industries. All of which are vital components for creating disruptive innovation.

 If you were given a chance to go 10 years back in time, what would you do differently in your job and professional development?

Job wise I would have taken an HR change management role in the BBC over the intranet role I actually took 10 years ago. This would have provided me with strategic management experience earlier than I actually got it.

When it comes to professional development – I would have continued with speaking at conferences, something I tailed off doing from 2003 onwards, and regret. Luckily my President Elect role is compensating for this!

In order to remain relevant in the future, what should SLA start doing? Stop doing? Do more of?

Start doing – all of SLA needs to engage with membership more. This was one of my election campaign topics. Board and HQ needs to engage and listen to the membership. This has started to occur with Deb Hunt’s presidency, and there was positive feedback from Leadership Summit attendees. We need to find a way of gaining the engagement we saw with Cindy Romaine’s Future Ready Blog.

Stop doing – working in silos in SLA. All too often we think less about ‘oneSLA’ , and more about what can my division or chapter do. We need to develop a more holistic view and consider how do we do things to benefit one SLA and its members.

Do more of – policy and advocacy work. We’re doing bits and pieces of work, and actively participating in IFLA, where we are part of a bigger group advocating for change. With Open Access and other issues becoming more prominent we will need to consider if we should do more policy work.

The SLA Annual Conference will be held this year in San Diego from the 9th-11th June.

To help members of the European Chapter keep in touch whilst in the USA, the SLA Europe board has set up a document to collect together details of our members who are flying out to San Diego.

If you are attending the conference this year, and would like to keep in touch with other European members whilst in San Diego, please fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kkgI2XXj7ZVCjvVqsoyv9ibqC6Vu_idKGY0RIJ4SIEU/viewform

Details will then be circulated to those registered to attend from Europe so that we can all keep in touch with each other!

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Best wishes,

Sam Wiggins

SLA Europe Events Committee Chair

Join our Blue Badge Guide Rachel to explore the newly renovated St Pancras and King’s Cross stations and discover the secrets to the surrounding area, once London’s most notorious red light district. With the dramatic transformation of the two Victorian railway stations and neighbouring goods yards, the gothic splendour of the old Midland Grand Hotel, a German Gymnasium, film locations, a canalside nature reserve and the church which gave the area its name; there is something for everyone on this walking tour of the area. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Justis this event is free for SLA members.

On completing the tour, we will adjourn to Kings Place for drinks and social networking.

Our Guide

Rachel Kolsky is a prize-winning Blue Badge guide (www.golondontours.com) who is passionate about exploring London’s heritage. Her walks and talks cover a wide range of themes and areas but always focus on the ‘human stories behind the buildings’. Her first book, ‘Jewish London’, was published in March 2012.

Having trained as a librarian, Rachel worked as an information professional in the financial services industry for over 25 years. Her work was recognised both at industry level with the award of Information Professional of the Year in 2006, and by her professional organisation, SLA, with the Membership Achievement Award in 2008.

With a degree in Politics and Modern History, Rachel’s love of research has always been linked to social history in particular and as a born and bred Londoner, this led her to train as a guide. She gained the Blue Badge for London in 2004, winning the prize for Best Written Paper.

When not guiding she is very much involved with her local independent cinema, The Phoenix, East Finchley, where she is a Trustee. Or she can be found on the high seas, speaking as a guest lecturer on cruises. For more details see www.golondontours.com

Date: 19th June 2013

Time: Assemble at 6:15 for prompt departure at 6.30pm

Price: Free for members, £10 for non-members (Due to the nature of this event, it will not be possible to take cash payment on the night. All monies must be paid in advance. Details to follow after booking)

Meeting place: Providing on booking

Registration: Registration is essential. Please sign up here

Our thanks go to Justis, for their kind sponsorship of this event.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Best wishes,

SLA Europe Events Committee

Asking attendees to ensure that their phones are switched on, rather than off, is not a common occurrence at many talks held at the National Library of Scotland. However, when it is on the topic of social media for information professionals, it does create the expectation that users can actively contribute to the presentation by tweeting about it from the very start. The SLA Europe event which drew just under 40 attendees was both entertaining and informative.

Bryan Christie, Head of Media and External Relations at the National Library of Scotland (NLS), gave an overview of the importance and impact of social media for organisations as well as providing a specific example of how the NLS used a Facebook campaign to drive up awareness of the organisation. Some useful metrics were also provided to demonstrate the actual benefits of using social media. The second speaker Nick Goldstein gave a fascinating talk on social media and how people use and invest time in both personal and professional networking through such a medium and the different content they expect to see. He also spoke specifically on LinkedIn which has 200 million members in over 200 countries.

The formal presentations were followed by questions and both speakers provided tips on how to use social media more effectively for promoting both your organisation and yourself; the latter in terms of professional development and career opportunities. Following on from this was the very popular informal networking where attendees were able to make new contacts or renew old acquaintances. This was a popular and well attended event and feedback from those present indicated that future SLA events in Scotland would be very much welcomed. It is hoped to run a further event sometime in early autumn, so keep an eye on our events page.

Our thanks once again to the National Library of Scotland for the free use of facilities and to LM Information Delivery for sponsoring the event.

Here’s Dennie to explain more about what he’ll be doing as our roving reporter.

This a marvellous opportunity to get involved in the conference and ask questions of the wider SLA organisation and we’ll be collecting the various videos here on the blog.

If so, the SLA Europe Nominating Committee invites you to nominate yourself or recommend a colleague, to serve as President Elect from June 2013, and become President in January 2014, of the SLA’s European Chapter.

Among the attributes that the Committee considers important for candidates to this professionally rewarding volunteer opportunity are:

• An effective networker and communicator (listener and speaker)

• An innovative thinker, solution-oriented

• An ambassador for SLA Europe and the information industry.

Further details can be viewed here, or you can contact the Nominations Committee.
Nominations must be emailed to the Committee (nominations@sla-europe.org) by Friday 17th May 2013, and include a statement from/about the candidate highlighting their qualities for standing.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Darron Chapman

Chair, Nominations Committee, and SLA Europe Past President

past-president@sla-europe.org

www.sla-europe.org

Who within the profession was the first to inspire you?

There are many outstanding individuals within the profession that have inspired me.  As a University Library Associate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the mid 80s, I was mentored by the science librarians at its Natural Sciences Library.  It was them who first introduced me to the Special Libraries Association (SLA).  And I have been its active member ever since.  Within this society of special librarians, I have enhanced my professional skills at all levels and have been inspired by some outstanding active SLA members, such as Wilda Newman, Richard Hulser, Eleanor MacLean and Sylvia Piggott.  As the past chair, the Science and Technology Division of SLA provided me with a solid training background, as well as concrete organizational and management skills.  Being a chair or co-chair of several SLA committees, the opportunities have enabled me to gain better understandings of organizational visions and goals at a larger scale.

If you think about the future of our profession – what keeps you awake at night and why?

Recently I spotted an article by an annoyed librarian, entitled, “Library Science Majors as Unemployed as High School Dropouts” published by the online Library Journal.  In its June 8th, 2012 online issue, Forbes also suggests, “Library and information science degree-holders bring in $57,600 mid-career, on average. Common jobs for them are school librarian, library director and reference librarian, and there are expected to be just 8.5% more of them by 2020.” The low pay scale and estimated growth projections make library and information science a less desired master’s degree for jobs right now.  Articles such as these keep me awake at night.  I have been pondering if the information and library science profession is slowly dying.  Could the profession still attract young people with bright and forward thinking minds in the future?  Would the profession one day be replaced by the state of art new technology?  A “paperless society” didn’t seem to be possible over 20 years ago.  Now it is so real and is in front of us. What does it mean to our profession?  What should we do as a profession to change the outlook of current environment that we are in.

Do you have ideas how information professionals could start disruptive innovation in their organizations?

As an academic engineering librarian, I had attended several faculty retreats organized by the School of Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz.  My role at the retreats was to listen, to learn and to be back with the information related to the new goals, the new five-year plan for the school, its past achievements and outstanding issues facing the school and faculty; afterwards, I was asked to share the results with the library staff.  Though, I gained some useful information from these retreats, my appearances did not have a huge impact on the Engineering School.  As an academic librarian, I was not a “value network”.

Instead of being a warm body at faculty meetings or retreats, a librarian should be more out-spoken, be more interactive and be one of the key components on a five-year curriculum planning team for a school.  A librarian should be one of the key-note speakers at faculty retreats. Using current technological tools, such as Piktochart, Easelly, Infogr.am, new ways to visualize data for information professions, a librarian should create infographics and share vital information with its research communities.

If you were given a chance to go 10 years back in time, what would you do differently in your job and professional development?

• To be more visible in my research community

• To attend, be active and be a presenter in my field at the professional conferences organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), etc.

• To market our information profession as other demanded professionals do

In order to remain relevant in the future, what should SLA start doing, stop doing, or do more of?

One says “location, location and location!”, when buying a house.  SLA should yell loudly “Marketing, marketing and marketing!”, when thinking about its image.  In the future, SLA should not only emphasize its name or dressing for success (I don’t mean they are not important), but also should sharpen its tones and shape its world image in order to truly convey who we are as a profession in the current environment, and what we can do and show to the world of information science.

17^th April heralded a Graduate Open day organised by BIALL, CLSIG and SLA Europe held at CILIP headquarters.  The day consisted of 9 speakers and a visit either to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, or the Wiener Library.

I chose to go to the Wiener Library, which has an extensive and important collection of archives from Nazi Germany, as I had read some articles on it last year and was keen to visit in person.  It was very interesting to see both their new building and their archives, including a family’s photo album that had been donated and documented how an individual had been affected by anti-semitic policies.  They seem to have a full events programme and I hope to visit again.

Firstly it was great to meet other graduates and new professionals in a similar position to myself.  I am not part of a large programme so it was a great opportunity to do some networking – thank you to all those who organised, spoke and sponsored!

Jacky Berry from the British Medical Association began the day, and she emphasised versatility, her varied career certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities of working in many different sectors across your career as the skills you develop are transferable.  Sam Wiggins (Norton Rose) was next and continued this by highlighting ‘core’ skills, which are transferable and ‘acquired’ skills, any deficit in which can be countered by an eagerness to learn and adaptability.  Sam also spoke of making the most of opportunities and creating your own.  He also mentioned #uklibchat, which sounds really interesting and is on my list of things to follow up.

A lot of those speaking were from legal information but the talks highlighted the range of work available within this sector.

Emily Allbon works at City University for the Law School, so has an academic library role.  She spoke quite enthusiastically of the student interaction and teaching that it involves – I was quite surprised she had to do marking though!  Perhaps most interesting was the Law portal, Lawbore, which she created; it was great to hear an example of an information professional creating something in their work that is appreciated by a wider audience.

Sandra Smythe works at a law firm, Mishcon de Reya, so she told us about the role of a legal librarian from a corporate perspective, and highlighted some of the positives and negatives.  She also pointed out that there can be great differences in attitude in different firms, e.g. whether they view the information department as support staff or as fellow professionals.

I had no idea about the Inns of Court prior to hearing Tracey Dennis (Inner Temple) so the next talk was an education.  They are very traditional environments in which to work, and as Tracey said this would not suit everyone but she finds the work varied and rewarding.  She has worked at 2 of the 4 inns as well as the House of Lords and a law firm as she sought to develop her experience and progress in her career.

Marie Grace Cannon, although she works at law firm Trowers and Hamlins, spoke on her trainee and library school experience.  She introduced, to me at least, the idea of a ‘digital brand’ and that you can use your online identity to market yourself and present what you want to present.  She pointed out that as CVs are generally limited to 2 sides in hard copy form, LinkedIn can be utilised as a place to have a comprehensive record of your experience – as a newbie to LinkedIn this is definitely something I intend to do!  As well as making the most out of library school, including the tutors themselves, she also spoke of CPD 23, a free online professional development course that shows commitment to your own development and looks good on the CV, as well as enhancing your skills!

A contrast to law was Daniel Rees from the Wellcome Trust.  With a collection that sounds like a vast and varied treasure trove, little wonder someone told him he had their ‘dream job’!  He is now an ‘engagement officer’ getting involved with interesting projects and giving talks on things that interest him, like reading heads!  He spoke very enthusiastically and again expressed that we should grab opportunities and get out of our comfort zones.

Simon Barron (British Library), is working on the British Library’s exciting Qatar digitisation project, spoke on Digital Librarianship.  It is hard to imagine the future of the information profession without an increased need for IT based skills, and so it was interesting to hear his thoughts.  I’ve not yet tried coding (sounds complex although useful) but Simon told us of ‘Codecademy’ where you can learn to code online and this is definitely something I’ll investigate.

The final talk was from Fiona Fogden (Linex), and she spoke about her varied career in libraries before moving to the ‘other side’ as she now works for a supplier – not something I’d have thought about as a future career option, so that was quite enlightening.  She pointed out the merits of formal qualifications, such as Prince2 and CIPS, as opposed to just internal courses within your organisation, and in terms of career development it was interesting to hear that said she had consulted a careers expert to highlight any areas she needed to gain experience in to progress.

As part of the day there was a prize draw for two books donated by Facet publishing – and to my great surprise I won one! So Yay!

The main messages of the day were to seize every opportunity and to be proactive in terms of both personal development and career progression.  Everyone who spoke and who I met came across as very dynamic, which I feel is a good sign for the future of the library and information profession!  While I will confess to feeling a little intimidated, by the end of the day I felt energised and inspired, full of determination to get my LinkedIn page up to date and maybe to even start my own blog – watch this space!

Full details will be made available shortly.

June:

June 19th, 6:15pm – Behind the Termini Tour with Rachel Kolsky

July:

July 3rd, evening – SLA Europe Summer Social

July 10th, 6pm for 6:30pm start – Personal Branding workshop with Kathy Ennis and Lyndsay Rees-Jones, kindly hosted and sponsored by PI

Meet the winners below and hear how attending the SLA Conference will impact them.

Penny Andrews

I am an activist, writer, performer (Radio 4, Glastonbury), musician (Radio 1, Latitude, Wireless), producer and gadget freak. I currently work as the Library Graduate Trainee at Leeds Metropolitan University. My interests include Open Access, repositories, accessibility, interoperability, digital libraries, human-computer interaction, Research Data Management and information seeking behaviour. I am a Library Camp organiser, National Autistic Society Ambassador and cerebral palsy sprinter.

I am anticipating the life-changing nature of the ECCA experience, as every account I’ve read or heard from past winners has indicated that this will be the case. I’m looking forward to meeting new people from all over the world and discovering new ideas and technologies.

Website: http://www.pennybinary.com

Lizzie Caperon

I work as subject librarian at Leeds University where I’m involved in information literacy teaching, developing online tutorials, collection management and liaison with academic departments. I’m also completing a masters dissertation on mobile technologies in the libraries.

I’m very much looking forward to meeting like-minded information professionals from all over the world at the SLA Conference and finding out international context to the current debates in the UK around Open Access to resources, MOOCs and the future of the library profession.

Lauren Lawler

I am the Assistant Knowledge Services Manager at A&L Goodbody Solicitors in Dublin. I hold a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from University College Dublin, and a postgraduate diploma in Public Relations from the Fitzwilliam Institute.

I’m so delighted to be attending the SLA Conference this year, and am looking forward to meeting with the SLA Legal Division as well as meeting law librarians from all over the world.

Laura Williams

I have worked as an information professional in the media sector since graduating from Sheffield University in 2011 with an MA in Librarianship. I’m currently working in the media library at ITV as a Media Logistics Co-ordinator responsible for delivering programme content on tape across the organisation for broadcast.  Prior to this role, I worked for ITV in other roles within the ITV programme archive. Before attending library school I  was a graduate trainee at the Bodleian Law Library.

I’m looking forward to gaining a broadened perspective on digital information at the conference as well as networking opportunities.

The SLA Europe Board and the boards of the co-sponsoring Divisions are proud to welcome the 2013 ECCAs to SLA and to help them advance their careers. Look out for more blogs, reports, and tweets about their experiences at SLA 2013 in San Diego.