Special Libraries Association https://www.sla.org Connecting People and Information Thu, 13 May 2021 15:30:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Abstracts Sought for 2021 Conference Posters https://www.sla.org/abstracts-sought-for-2021-conference-posters/ https://www.sla.org/abstracts-sought-for-2021-conference-posters/#respond Tue, 11 May 2021 18:49:51 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=40779 If esoteric peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for sharing in-depth research, posters are the equivalent of Twitter—a means of communicating essential information to a broad audience in bite-sized pieces. But what posters lack in editorial depth and professional reputation, they can make up for in visual appeal and audience reach, making them a favorite for venues from industry conferences to high school science fairs.

After converting to a virtual platform in 2020 and transitioning its live poster presentations to an online format, the SLA Annual Conference is back in 2021 with a poster program designed to encourage submissions by as many attendees as possible on as many topics as possible. SLA’s call for poster abstracts also packs a potent financial punch—poster presenters qualify for a discounted conference registration rate of $149, a savings of $100 off the SLA member rate and $320 off the non-member rate.

At SLA2020, the posters were located in a dedicated area of the exhibit hall, and they were easy to access thanks to the conference’s virtual format. They were on display throughout the two-week duration of the conference, and on the final day of SLA2020, the poster presenters were available to chat live with viewers during dedicated exhibit hall time (i.e., when no education sessions were taking place). To encourage attendees to view the posters, SLA2020 featured a contest with three categories: Best Visual Presentation, Best Science Topic, and Best Overall.

At SLA2021, the posters will be accessible for viewing throughout the month of August; poster presentations will take place on Thursday, August 12. The poster review committee is considering reprising the contest and/or creating other incentives to encourage attendee interaction with the posters and their presenters.

The deadline to submit a poster abstract is Tuesday, June 1, at 5:00 p.m. ET. Both SLA members and non-members are invited to submit abstracts. Submissions are welcome on any topic relevant to special librarianship and the practice of managing, organizing, storing, and sharing information.

Click here to learn more about the poster submission process or to submit a poster abstract.

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Making Work and Technology Work for Librarians https://www.sla.org/making-work-and-technology-work-for-librarians/ https://www.sla.org/making-work-and-technology-work-for-librarians/#respond Tue, 04 May 2021 20:22:34 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=40696 Working remotely, or commuting to and from the office. Speaking face to face, or communicating through a computer screen. Feeling connected to co-workers or isolated from them. Taking advantage of technology, or feeling overwhelmed by it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created stark choices for many workers and their employers, and these choices will come into even sharper focus as the pandemic eases. Increasingly, employers and workers will need to harness the forces driving the future of work and technology and implement new practices and processes accordingly.

That was the overriding message of InfoTrends 2021, a half-day exploration of the intersection of work and technology presented by SLA on April 29. The four speakers—Brian Merchant, a tech journalist who’s writing a book about human opposition to automation; Debra Jasper, an expert in enhancing professional communication and presentation skills; Chrissy Geluk, an information professional who enjoys experimenting with new technologies and using them to enhance her productivity; and Jeff Schwartz, a consultant who leads research into the future of work—shared insights and skills that, taken as a whole, spoke to the challenges and opportunities awaiting special librarians and their organizations in the months and years ahead.

Among the takeaways were the following:

  • “Today, when we present, we have to fight for attention, and attention is EVERYTHING. No one gets up in the morning and says, ‘I’m looking forward to watching a webinar today.'” Debra Jasper
  • “The original sin of automation was that it was done undemocratically and for purposes of profit extraction. We have to fight back against those impulses wherever we detect them.” Brian Merchant
  • “We have to ask ourselves, what is the end we are seeking when we talk about re-imagining or re-architecting work? I think the future of work will be, to borrow a phrase that Thomas Friedman uses, ‘dynamic stability,’ like riding a bicycle. It will always be in motion.” Jeff Schwartz

Between the presentations, networking breaks allowed attendees to gather at virtual tables and share their reactions and insights with fellow librarians and information professionals. Seema Rampersad, a librarian at the British Library, and Eugene Giudice, an information professional with Dentons in Chicago, acted as “catalysts” for the discussions by sharing their observations.

Recordings of the InfoTrends presentations will be available soon in SLA’s Learning Hub.

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Work, Technology to Converge at InfoTrends 2021 https://www.sla.org/work-technology-to-converge-at-infotrends-2021/ https://www.sla.org/work-technology-to-converge-at-infotrends-2021/#respond Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:26:14 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=40621 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about many new changes and accelerated others that were already occurring, and nowhere has this been felt more acutely than at work. Jobs have been eliminated, created, transformed, and reimagined almost overnight, while workers have learned new ways to perform their jobs and employers have begun to question many assumptions about work they long took for granted.

Against this backdrop, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) is hosting Infotrends 2021, a half-day conference on work and technology. When SLA debuted InfoTrends in June 2020, hopes that the COVID-19 virus would prove to be a temporary event—much like the seasonal flu—still flickered, and the audience of more than 300 librarians and information professionals was keen to hear about skills and resources they could put to use immediately, including better search strategies and new technologies such as virtual reality. Now, with the pandemic still gripping the world but vaccination efforts starting to make headway, attention is focusing on what the post-COVID landscape will look like and how special librarians and information professionals can best position themselves to thrive in that environment.

With this in mind, InfoTrends 2021 features four speakers who will address the intersection of work and technology and provide both high-level and hands-on perspectives on the skills and insights that can help librarians and info pros succeed in the years ahead:

Debra Jasper, Mindset Digital
The face of business is now a computer screen, segmented into squares with names and faces of colleagues and customers. To stand out in this virtual environment, you must be a savvy virtual communicator, able to develop and lead compelling virtual presentations and meetings on a small screen. Debra Jasper will give you tips and tricks on the visual approaches you need in today’s “new normal.” She’ll show you how to “Put the Power in Your Next Virtual Presentation” and get big results from a small screen. Debra has delivered keynotes and master classes in more than a dozen countries around the world, from Australia to Dubai, and was recently named one of the top 12 “Winning Women Entrepreneurs in North America” by Ernst & Young.

Jeff Schwartz, Deloitte
What does the future of work look like in a virtual age? Jeff Schwartz is the author of Work Disrupted and a recognized global advisor and thought leader on the future of work. He currently leads the U.S. Consulting Future of Work research and practice at Deloitte and has been the global editor and senior researcher for 11 years of Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report, one of the world’s leading annual reports on the future of the workforce. In addition to his recent book, he has authored and contributed to more than 40 articles for The Wall Street Journal, the MIT Sloan Management Review, the Rotman Management Review (at the University of Toronto), and Wired magazine.

Brian Merchant, OneZero
Technology can help power work, but implementing new technologies can sometimes cause disruptions. Brian Merchant studies and writes about technology and work and is the author of a bestselling book about the iPhone, the One Device. He’s the senior books editor for OneZero, Medium’s tech publication; he runs Automaton, a site that examines the human impact of automation, for Gizmodo; is an editor at Motherboard, VICE’s science and technology outlet; and is the founder/editor of Terraform, its online fiction site. His work has appeared in Wired, the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Fortune, and other publications.

Chrissy Geluk, Librarian at Your Service
Longtime SLA member and technophile Chrissy Geluk was first introduced to SharePoint more than 10 years ago, when she migrated a corporate library site using SharePoint 2010 Foundation. Since then, Chrissy has continued to learn and use other Microsoft O365/M365 apps like Power BI and Microsoft Teams to help her clients achieve their ultimate business goals. In 2015, she launched her own information services business, Librarian at Your Service, to provide literature searches and analyses, content management and development, and end-user training.

InfoTrends 2021 is being hosted on Remo, an all-in-one conferencing platform that offers real-time, face-to-face engagement. Attendees will be able to interact with speakers and fellow attendees during the education sessions (where they’ll also join in small breakout discussions) and in the networking breaks that follow.

InfoTrends attendees will receive access not only to the event itself but also to the session recordings, which will be posted in SLA’s Learning Hub approximately 10 days after the event ends. Register for InfoTrends today!

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Communities Offer Many Perspectives on Learning https://www.sla.org/communities-offer-many-perspectives-on-learning/ https://www.sla.org/communities-offer-many-perspectives-on-learning/#respond Tue, 02 Mar 2021 15:41:07 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=40153 A book club discussion about Ozan Varol’s Think Like a Rocket Scientist. An interactive training session on how to understand and use Robert’s Rules of Order. A panel discussion on how librarians can support scholarly research and communication. A presentation on how financial analysis can be a valuable addition to a competitive intelligence practitioner’s toolkit.

These are just a sample of the many learning opportunities offered by SLA’s communities, which are formed around geographic areas (such as the Washington, D.C., Community and the Asia Community), disciplines (e.g., the Engineering Community), and skill sets (including the Taxonomy Community and the Competitive Intelligence Community). These communities develop education and social programs for their members that augment SLA’s association- and profession-wide offerings such as the SLA Annual Conference, InfoTrends, certificate programs, and virtual roundtables.

To enhance the learning experience, SLA and its communities use a variety of delivery platforms, some more conducive to direct instruction while others encourage interaction and even relationship building among attendees. And most of the offerings are posted to SLA’s Learning Hub after they air, so those who miss the live events can find the recordings in one centralized location.

To ensure its learning programs meet the needs of information professionals, SLA offers members opportunities to influence the content of those programs. For example, all SLA members have until Friday, March 12, to review and comment on the 130-plus education session proposals submitted for SLA’s 2021 Annual Conference. Their feedback will be included in the final review process conducted by SLA’s Annual Conference Advisory Council.

Whether your tastes run to multi-session conferences with hundreds of attendees or one-off online discussions in small groups, SLA has a learning community for you. Find out more at sla.org/learn-2/.

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What Skills Are in Your 2021 Toolkit? https://www.sla.org/what-skills-are-in-your-2021-toolkit/ https://www.sla.org/what-skills-are-in-your-2021-toolkit/#respond Tue, 23 Feb 2021 22:45:20 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=40011 Which skills helped special librarians, competitive intelligence practitioners, and other information professionals get through 2020, and which ones will make a difference in 2021? Those two questions were the focus of “Planning for Post-Pandemic Work,” an online panel discussion presented by SLA’s Competitive Intelligence Community on February 17.

Led by moderator Craig Fleisher of Aurora WDC, the panelists—Stephanie Heyroth Wilcox of the Nevada legislature, Tommy Goodwin of the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance, Phil Britton of the Sedulo Group, and Jim Miller of Connect Public Affairs—described the skills that made a difference for them in 2020, what they wish they’d done differently last year, and how they plan to achieve better outcomes for themselves and their clients in 2021.

For Tommy Goodwin, the skills that made a difference last year will do so again in 2021—and may gain more respect as a result.

“There’s a terminology in the broader business lexicon that I absolutely cannot stand, which is ‘soft skills,'” he said. “I think it’s one of the worst turns of phrase in the management literature, because really what they are is power skills. If you think about the power skills that CI practitioners have and that are innate to success in this profession, you think about flexibility. You think about perseverance. You think about relationship management. You couldn’t have survived 2020 without them, and I think they’re the skills that will carry us through 2021.”

Stephanie Heyroth Wilcox sees resourcefulness and especially organization as the skills that will prove crucial to success this year.

“That’s what we librarians pride ourselves in—we know how to classify and store information and make sure you can find it later,” she said. “The past 12 months have highlighted how important that is, because when people no longer have access to a physical collection and they contact you and wonder if you can help them, the beauty of being able to say, we have that and here it is, and you can keep on going—that’s really, really important.”

Jim Miller emphasized the value of adapting—and helping others adapt—to changes in technology.

“The tech acceleration and helping people with that is something I’ve been focusing on, because we all have 55 million chat apps on our phones right now,” said Jim Miller. “There are a lot of new tools coming out, and if you look at the education space, for example, there are some community colleges here in Canada that have really had to pivot—how do you teach culinary skills online, how do you teach nursing online. There’s some adaptive work being done, but at the same time, there’s an overwhelmingness to all of the technology that is coming forward. Helping people sort that out is something a lot of us in this area are looking at.”

Phil Britton piggybacked on Miller’s comments, noting that the technological advancements are combining with the pandemic to hasten the evolution of trends that were already taking place prior to the onset of COVID-19.

“All of the trends that we saw before the pandemic are still there—they’re just accelerating,” he said. “I came out of retail, and as I look at the retail stores that have closed, they were going to die anyway. They were just euthanized instead of suffering a long, lingering death. So helping people understand that all the trends that were already there are still there—they’re just on steroids—is something that we want to help our clients recognize.”

“Planning for Post-Pandemic Work” was the CI Community’s first learning program of 2021; the next one, “CI Toolkit: Financial Analysis,” will be held on March 24. To learn more about SLA education programs, visit the SLA Learning Hub.

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Like Attendees, Presenters Learn from Conferences https://www.sla.org/like-attendees-presenters-learn-from-conferences/ https://www.sla.org/like-attendees-presenters-learn-from-conferences/#respond Mon, 01 Feb 2021 21:08:41 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=39784 Along with networking, professional education is one of the leading reasons to attend a conference. But attendees aren’t the only ones who learn from conference sessions—presenters learn valuable lessons as well.

“Working with my co-panelists helped me pull together my initial thoughts into a coherent session, and I was able to hear a lot about different perspectives and experiences in the process,” says Claire Sewell, who participated in two panel discussions and a poster session at SLA’s 2020 Annual Conference. “Every stage of the process of presenting—from planning to recording to responding to questions afterward—was collaborative and offered lots of opportunities for engagement.”

Marydee Ojala, who has presented at numerous SLA and industry meetings during her career, also learned lessons from her SLA2020 presentation experience.

“Always, when I put together a presentation, I ask questions of myself,” says Marydee. “Is this really what I want to say? Is what I put on the slide really true? So I’m learning and teaching myself as I go along. For me, that’s one of the most valuable pieces of presenting. It’s educational, not just for the audience, but also for me!”

With more than 100 education sessions on offer, from 5-minute “Lightning Talks” to 90-minute certificate courses, SLA annual conferences offer a multitude of learning opportunities for presenters and attendees alike. SLA2021, scheduled for August 4-13, promises to build on SLA2020—SLA’s first all-virtual conference—and deliver an interactive learning experience that lives up to its theme, Destination Everywhere.

The virtual nature of SLA2020 posed challenges even for experienced presenters who have grown accustomed to in-person meetings. “Trying to replicate [the in-person experience] in a virtual environment is something I’m still working on,” Marydee admits. “Mastering the art of reading chat comments while presenting is, for me, another work in progress. Going forward, I’m thinking of ways to involve the audience and keep them engaged.”

“I know it can be daunting to consider presenting online,” Claire says. “But the experience of SLA2020 has shown me how great this can be for learning from others and expanding your network—all from the comfort of your sofa!”

For Tom Nielsen, the biggest lesson learned from presenting at SLA2020 was related to content, not the nature of the conference platform.

“Emma Antobam-Ntekudzi and I presented a discussion-focused session at SLA 2020 that we called ‘Witnessing Whiteness in LIS,'” he says. “Our plan was to introduce the session with some ground rules, then assign attendees randomly to breakout rooms and have them discuss three questions. We then brought them back for a report and more discussion. Thankfully, each breakout group used a shared document we created to keep discussion notes. But when I saw these notes afterward, I realized we had offered more ‘food for thought’ than attendees could digest in the allotted time.”

The solution, Tom decided, is to devise a simple and realistic discussion agenda focused on providing time and space for thoughtful discussion of a few important issues. “All it takes is one good question to generate a lot of discussion,” he says.

Want to learn more about information and librarianship? Consider presenting a session at SLA’s 2021 Annual Conference. Proposals are being accepted through Monday, February 15. Prefer to write a paper? Submit an abstract to present a contributed paper.

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Multiply the Power of Your Knowledge at SLA2021 https://www.sla.org/multiply-the-power-of-your-knowledge-at-sla2021/ https://www.sla.org/multiply-the-power-of-your-knowledge-at-sla2021/#respond Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:38 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=39667 Many people have heard the expression “knowledge is power.” Far fewer are familiar with “knowledge shared is knowledge squared,” which is another way of saying that sharing knowledge multiplies its power exponentially.

Special librarians manage information resources for government agencies, businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations, so they intuitively understand the value of sharing knowledge. The challenge is getting them to share their own knowledge—their expertise, insights, and lessons learned—outside their organizations, with their peers and professional networks.

That’s the challenge the SLA Annual Conference is uniquely designed to address. The conference brings together hundreds of special librarians, information professionals and industry partners to connect, learn and share. The sharing can take many forms, from a 5-minute conversation about COVID-19 safety measures at a networking event to a 60-minute presentation on taxonomy development at an education session. The lessons from these conversations and presentations can reverberate throughout the conference and, ultimately, across the profession, multiplying their power and impact.

That’s especially true of knowledge gained from conference sessions that attendees rate highly. Based on post-conference surveys, the following sessions presented at SLA2020 were the most popular with attendees:

  • 10 Secrets of Successful Live Virtual Learning
  • Fostering Diversity in Science: Physics Roundtable
  • Fighting Bias, One Search at a Time
  • Misinformation, Disinformation, and Manipulated Media: What’s Your Protection Plan?
  • The ROI of Research Services: Measure Value, Not Usage
  • Project Management for the Information Professional
  • Accelerating the Transition to Open Access
  • An ABC of Bias and why you should love your enemy!
  • Graphic Design 101: Marketing and Data Visualization Tips for the Non-Designer
  • The Universe in a Slide of Glass: the History, Preservation, and Data Mining of Astronomical Plates

The variety of topics addressed by these sessions—open access, data visualization, and search engine bias, to name just three—reflect the diverse environments in which special librarians and information professionals work and the challenges they face as well as the breadth of knowledge they possess. That knowledge is being sought once again for sharing at SLA2021, which (like SLA2020) will be conducted virtually.

Do you have insights, expertise and lessons that your peers might find useful? SLA2020 attendees said they were especially interested in presentations on technology, trends, career advancement, data management, and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) at future meetings, so knowledge about these topics is particularly valuable. But, as the list above demonstrates, the universe of potential session topics is nearly unlimited.

Share your knowledge at SLA2021 by submitting a session proposal no later than Monday, February 15. Prefer to write and present a paper? The deadline to submit a paper abstract is Monday, February 22.

Multiply the power of your knowledge by presenting at SLA2021!

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Improve Your Intelligence Skills in 2021 https://www.sla.org/improve-your-intelligence-skills-in-2021/ https://www.sla.org/improve-your-intelligence-skills-in-2021/#respond Tue, 05 Jan 2021 20:47:49 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=39515 Wondering what 2021 has in store for you? Make sure better intelligence skills are part of the answer by enrolling in one or more of SLA’s certificate courses in competitive and decision intelligence, starting with INTEL-01: Essentials, Ethics, & Current Practices, which is now accepting registrations.

The certificate program in competitive and decision intelligence provides two certificate options: (1) the Library and Information Science Professionals “Core” Certificate, which requires 14 courses, and (2) the Competitive & Decision Intelligence Intel Information Function Certificate, which requires 9 courses. INTEL-01 is required for both certificates, as is INTEL-02: Intelligence Projects & Project Management, which is also open for registration.

Numerous studies have shown that the COVID-19 virus has disrupted government and business operations (especially supply chains) and upended entire industries, notably health care and travel and tourism. These industries and organizations will need to rebuild and refocus their intelligence capabilities to make optimal use of their resources in a post-virus world.

The certificate program in competitive and decision intelligence sets forth a comprehensive set of intelligence competencies that outline and define the skills and attributes essential to providing good intelligence. These competencies are discussed in INTEL-01 and serve as the springboard to intermediate and advanced functions, practices, and techniques covered in the overall program.

“We begin to build your intelligence competencies by looking at what distinguishes intelligence from research—even intelligence-oriented research,” says Cynthia Cheng Correia, managing director of Knowledge inForm, which presents the courses. “We focus on what all practitioners need to understand to produce sound intelligence, and how LIS practitioners can identify and expand their opportunities through competitive or decision intelligence.”

INTEL-01 starts on January 18 and runs through February 5; INTEL-02 begins on February 8 and ends on February 26. Lectures for both courses (and for all Competitive and Decision Intelligence Certificate Program courses) are pre-recorded to allow participants more flexibility and convenience. Both course schedules include two live meetings to provide time for group discussions and questions.

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Learning Doesn’t Take a Holiday https://www.sla.org/learning-doesnt-take-a-holiday/ https://www.sla.org/learning-doesnt-take-a-holiday/#respond Mon, 14 Dec 2020 21:03:58 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=39366 It’s December, the time of year when thoughts turn to . . . competitive intelligence?

On December 9, SLA’s Competitive Intelligence Community hosted an online presentation by Jim Miller, who provides strategic competitive intelligence to businesses, associations, and nonprofit organizations to help them manage their public affairs challenges. The topic of the presentation was continuous learning, which was apropos given that the COVID-19 virus has accelerated the use of technologies that enable individuals and organizations to learn 24/7.

Miller recently founded Your Brain is Not Full, an organization dedicated to building a community of individuals and organizations advocating for the development of a lifelong learning mindset. He focused his presentation on the skills shortages and mismatches plaguing the economy and how he believes CI methods can help discern which jobs will need reskilling and which skills those workers will need.

“I think a lot of the skills we use in our CI programs are also used and utilized in developing a continuous learning mindset, and I see this as sort of strategic foresight for education, training and career planning,” he said. “This is an area that is growing and is certainly going to be rapidly evolving in the near future, in the sense that we need to look at ideas around what roles people will be playing, what jobs they’ll be doing, and what skills they’ll need to participate in the economy in the future. And I think people with a CI background and a foresight background have an excellent role to play in helping to do this.”

The CI Community isn’t the only group within SLA offering educational programming this month, a time when (virtual) holiday parties are crowding business and personal calendars. On December 18, the Michigan Community will host its annual business meeting, which will be followed by a presentation by Sharon Ladenson of Michigan State University Libraries on incorporating anti-racism practices into libraries.

“The Michigan Community usually has a speaker attend the end-of-year gathering,” says Alex Hauser, the Michigan Community’s secretary. “In the past, it has been an in-person event where we’ve gathered in a combination holiday party and annual business meeting. Last year we met at the Detroit Zoo, and the zoo’s director of animal welfare spoke to us about various welfare initiatives.”

On December 21, the SLA Legal Community will present “Data Science Fundamentals,” which will explain what data science is, how it is “done,” and how it relates to topics like big data and artificial intelligence. The presentation will discuss how, and to what extent, data science is relevant to legal librarians—how it is used in empirical legal research to optimize the business of law. The presenter will be Sarah Lin, a former legal librarian and now information architect and digital librarian at RStudio, a data science software company.

In addition to presenting these and other December education events, SLA has extended access to its 2020 conference content through the end of the year. This will give attendees more time to view sessions they missed or want to watch again—proof that, in SLA, learning never takes a holiday.

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Crowdsourcing the ‘Future-Thinking’ Process https://www.sla.org/crowdsourcing-the-future-thinking-process/ https://www.sla.org/crowdsourcing-the-future-thinking-process/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2020 15:47:10 +0000 https://www.sla.org/?p=39333 During World War II, 23 engineers from Lockheed (a U.S. aircraft manufacturer) were hand-picked by the U.S. Army to quickly design and build U.S. fighter aircraft. Their designs, which included the P-38 Lightning and the P-80 Shooting Star, were so successful that Lockheed decided to continue funding a separate innovation function after the war ended. That function is called Lockheed Advanced Development Programs, but the original effort is better known to historians and business leaders as “Skunk Works,” so named because of the fumes from a nearby factory that permeated the aircraft hangar where the engineers worked.

In the years since, some organizations have tried to replicate Lockheed’s success and created their own “skunk works” units to spur innovation. But as Adam Richardson pointed out in a Harvard Business Review article, such efforts rarely succeed over the long term.

“A small group operating autonomously can indeed succeed with audacious goals and produce something stunning,” he wrote. “But it’s one thing to have a one-off innovative product and quite another to have a ubiquitous innovation process.”

With SLA seeking new revenue streams to supplement the membership dues and conference registrations and exhibits that have long been its primary funding sources, taking a “Skunk Works” approach to generating a breakthrough idea or innovation might seem self-evident. But rather than limit the conversation about new revenue to a task force or committee (or themselves), the SLA Board of Directors decided to crowdsource the answer by issuing a challenge to the SLA membership and other interested parties.

“We know that SLA needs new revenue streams, new ways to engage existing members around the world, and new ways to grow and diversify our membership,” SLA President Tara Murray Grove wrote in an e-mail to SLA members. “There have been a variety of task forces, conference and Leadership Summit sessions, town halls, board meetings, and more related to these challenges. Now, together with the SLA Board, I am calling on you to participate in this future-thinking process.”

The result is the SLA Innovation Challenge, which is designed to encourage SLA members to submit, either individually or in teams, innovations or ideas that could generate revenue and growth for SLA. Teams can be composed of members, non-members, industry partners, and other interested parties and can include as many individuals as needed or want to collaborate on the development of an idea.

SLA is looking for as many ideas as possible, and therefore will not limit the number of ideas an individual or team submits. The board of directors will take these ideas to build an action plan to move the association forward. The deadline for the initial round of innovative ideas is January 19.

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