As you may or may not know, I am a member of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), and this year I am running for an SLA Board position for 2011-2013. The position is Division Cabinet Chair-Elect (which is quite a mouthful).
Even SLA members will look confused when I tell them the position I'm running for. Flippantly, I will tell them the position is "king of Divisions". More seriously, the Division Cabinet Chair-Elect primarily acts as a liaison between the various SLA Divisions and the SLA Board. The Division Cabinet Chair-Elect helps out Division leadership in whatever way he or she can, and is an active member of the Board.
I'm excited about the possibility of serving on the Board. It's yet another way that I can give back to SLA as an association, which has done so much for me, professionally and personally.
As part of this process, I wanted to share some of the statements I made at the SLA Annual Conference in New Orleans. I think this will give you a little more insight into my position and thoughts.
I'll be sharing more of this information over the next few weeks.
Opening statement and platform
I’ve been an SLA member since 2002, but have been
active in public, academic and corporate libraries for almost 20 years, and am
currently doing independent work, teaching, speaking and consulting. Most
recently, I was at Sun Microsystems, a tech company, for over 9 years, doing
research, training, competitive intelligence work, and working with social
media, among other things. I am currently a member of the SLA Virtual Worlds Council, a founding member and Past Chair of the Competitive Intelligence
Division, and was President of the Rocky Mountain Chapter when the conference
was there in 2007 (and there weren’t any tornadoes, thankfully). I also blog,
tweet, do a bi-weekly music podcast called Music Therapy and will receive a
second Master’s degree in Counseling in August of this year.
Not to trivialize the scale of what’s happening in the
Gulf oil spill, but I worry about a similar slow-motion crisis happening to
SLA, and to many associations. To me, there are a few major crises facing us as
Divisions, Chapters, and SLA as an association:
- Funding
- Membership
- Programming and value outside of the annual conference
These are all tied together tightly, and really come
down to a question of value – the value that members, vendors and SLA get out
of the association.
I think some of the best tools we can use to bring more
value to SLA members are:
- Transparency/openness
- Communication
- Flexibility
By transparency, I mean something that is a hallmark of
what we do – making information available. We need to know plainly the difficulties
we are facing and the resources that we have. We need to know the state of our
membership and our units, and what your thoughts are. Otherwise we make
decisions that don’t consider critical elements. We make the potentially wrong
decision.
By communication, I mean talking with each other. I
mean sharing information back and forth. Talking and listening. And I think we
need to expand the conversation to include everyone – units, members, vendors,
Board members.
By flexibility, I mean a willingness to consider new
things, potentially big changes, new ways of thinking about ourselves, our
programming, and our fundraising. Flexibility and change frankly mean being
uncomfortable, but it also means doing something new, interesting, exciting and
relevant. And I’m all for that.
In difficult times, it becomes critical that we have
all the information we need, all the participation we can get, and all the
options that are possible. Only by having all three can we get through the
adjustments and changes we need to get through, and to ultimately thrive. And I
think we can thrive.
(End of opening statement)
I'd love to have a conversation with you about this. What are your thoughts? What would you suggest for the betterment of SLA and its members?
