Sunday, June 9th                    11:15 am – 1:45 pm     

CONSULTING SECTION SESSION: Consulting: Managing the Expectation, Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones

Successful consulting is all about managing the expectations – yours and theirs. Come discuss with Rebecca what you need to know about managing the engagement and benefit from what she has learned in over 20 years of consulting.

Sunday, June 9th                    1:30 pm – 3:00 pm     

Leadership Roles in KM: Grabbing New Opportunities! Ramin Assa Booz, Allen Hamilton, Knowledge Management Manager; Denise Chochrek, Frito Lay, Senior Knowledge Analyst; Jane Dysart, Dysart & Jones; Deborah Keller, Department of Homeland Security; Nancy Lewis, DuPont

As David Weinberger points out in his new book, Too Big to Know, organizations today need to recognize the power of difference (fruitful disagreement), public learning (leaving tracks for others to follow & conversations to engage in), filtering information on the way and out (taxonomies and finding places for inclusion while embracing messiness) and opening a window so that the expert really is in the room. Our speakers discuss new opportunities for using our skills in different and exciting ways.

Sunday, June 9th                    3:30 pm – 5 pm    

SPOTLIGHT SESSION: The Experts Are In! – One-Off Career Advice, Stephen Abram, Gale Cengage;  David Cappoli, UCLA School of Law; Anne Caputo, Anne Caputo Consulting; Ann Cullen,  Emory University;  Susan DiMattia; Jane Dysart, Dysart & Jones; Bill Fisher, San Jose State;  Richard Hulser, Natural History Museum Los Angeles County; Deborah Hunt, Information Edge; Jill Hurst-Wahl, Syracuse University;  Juanita Richardson Dysart & Jones Associates; Thomas Rink, Northeastern State University; Ethel Salonen, The MITRE Corporation; Donna Scheeder, Library Of Congress;  Jan Sykes, Info Mgmt Svcs Inc; Rebecca Vargha Univ. of North Carolina School of Library and Information Science; Ulla de Stricker, de Stricker Associates

Do you have a vexing workplace issue and are not sure where to turn?  Are you facing a career decision and would like some advice from senior SLA members who have “been there?” Using a speed dating format, you will have the opportunity to run your challenge past some of SLA’s most knowledgeable and experienced members as they act as a sounding board and give you their take on your situation. This is not resume review or assistance with a job search, but rather a chance to pose that question you were afraid to ask and get an answer from some of the most seasoned professionals in our industry. 

Monday, June 10th                 8:00 am – 9:30 am     

BUSINESS MEETING: Leadership and Management Division Business Meeting and Breakfast

Amy Affelt, Compass Lexecon, Director of Database Research

Join division chair Amy Affelt and the LMD board for a review of the events of the past year and a look at the future. The Karen J. Switt Award will be presented.

 Monday, June 10th                 8:00 am – 9:30 am     

CONTENT BUYERS SECTION SESSION: Content Buying Hot Topics for 2013, Robin Neidorf, FreePint Director of Research; Bill Noorlander, BST America

The session has 3 parts – panelist presentation, attendee ‘round table’ discussion, Q&A * The two panelists will provide an overview of the Content Buying issues and challenges for 2013; * Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss their own challenges, issues and possible solutions on dealing with the challenges of content buying in 2013

Monday, June 10th                 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Leadership: A Commanding Officer’s Viewpoint, Winton Smith Captain, United States Navy

Come hear the Commanding Officer of Naval Base San Diego, Captain Winton Smith, talk about his leadership experiences and how his lessons-learned and insights can benefit information professionals. Welcome Aboard!

Co-Sponsored with the Military Division

Monday, June 10th                 10:00 am – 11:30 am

SPOTLIGHT SESSION: Organizing Knowledge, Patrick Lambe, Straits Knowledge

Internationally known, Founder, Straits Knowledge, and Author, Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness, shares insights on the roles that taxonomies can play in knowledge and information management. Patrick looks at a variety of ways in which taxonomies can underpin other important knowledge management applications, such as content management systems, records management systems, search, data warehouses, etc.

Monday, June 10th                 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm     

MARKETING SECTION SESSION:You Built It. They Didn’t Come. Now What? Communications for Managing Change, Joleen Schultz Joleen, Schultz & Associates

Think about it. We ask people to modify how they request our services. We launch new web site interfaces. We replace familiar databases with other resources. We introduce new services. We enhance our abilities to add insights to our research. Information and knowledge services are either initiating change themselves, or they are being changed by external forces. And you’re at the epicenter. You’ve embraced the changes but how do you get everyone else on board? Change management communications calls for understanding how people change and how communications can affect change. Join us for lunch as our speakers discuss how communications are developed to modify habits, perceptions and processes related to changes in information services. Key communications components will be outlined and best practices will be shared.

Monday, June 10th                 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm     

LMD and KMD Open House

Join your SLA colleagues from the Leadership & Management Division and the Knowledge Management Division for a networking reception that will be second to none! Let’s stay classy, San Diego!

Tuesday, June 11th            10:00 am – 12:00 pm     

Disaster Planning for Information Professionals, Tahirih Fusscas; Tim Siftar, Drexel University Libraries; Dan Wilson, University of Virginia

SLA’s members are experts in information sharing environments and structures. They excel in setting up collaborative systems. They are more likely to occupy a neutral role within their organization as an unbiased provider of quality external information. Come learn how you can be indispensable to your organization when disaster happens! It’s no longer “if,” but “when.” Think Hurricane Sandy, the Derecho, and the mid-Atllantic earthquake. Focus will be on lessons learned by affected libraries and information centers as well as guidelines for effective disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Using social media during and after an incident will also be discussed.

Tuesday, June 11th                       2:00 pm –3:30 pm      

Leading from the Library: How Can I Be a Leader When ________________? Ulla de Stricker,  de Stricker Associates; Gloria Zamora

In this interactive session, a panel of three SLA leaders will offer their practical experience to help you overcome leadership challenges you face in your work.  Attendees will have two minutes to explain their leadership challenge and our panel will have five minutes to respond.  This session will be facilitated and attendees are encouraged to share and participate.  During the last ten minutes attendees will have a chance to identify and share the “golden nuggets” they will takeaway from this session.

Congratulations to Penny Andrews, this year’s winner of the SLA Europe-LMD Early Career Conference Award.

Penny is currently the Library Graduate Trainee at Leeds Metropolitan University and has pursued studies centering around IP rights, information literacy, encryption, standards, computer-mediated communication, management, user-centered design, innovation and e-business.

Penny is an activist, writer, performer (Radio 4, Glastonbury), musician (Radio 1, Latitude, Wireless), producer and gadget freak. She is a Library Camp organizer, National Autistic Society Ambassador, and cerebral palsy sprinter.

 About the Award

The Early Career Conference Award (ECCA) was established in 2007. The purpose of the award is to provide the opportunity for those at the start of their career to attend the SLA Annual Conference, and benefit from the networking opportunities that SLA and SLA Europe provide.

The Award allows winners to attend the 2013 SLA Annual Conference and INFO-EXPO in San Diego, 9 – 11 June 2013.

Each Award is worth about $4000. It covers the full cost of Conference registration, hotel lodging, economy return airfare to San Diego, and meals and appropriate incidental expenses.

The LMD Award winner is paired with a mentor. Their mentor will brief them before the Conference, give guidance during the Conference, and maintain a link to the Division following the Conference.

Congratulations, Penny!

The awards committee is soliciting nominations from the Leadership and Management Division for the 2013 Karen J. Switt Leadership Award.

Each year, the Leadership & Management Division honors a member who has shown outstanding leadership, served as a role model for others, and contributed significantly to SLA. In 1999, the award was named in memory of Karen J. Switt, a much-admired and much-missed LMD member. For those of you who did not know Karen, here is a link to a November 29, 1999 article from the Chicago Tribune that describes her life.

 Here is a link to previous award winners since 1989.

 To nominate someone for this award, please send an email to Hope Tillman (hope@hopetillman.com).

Please include in your email why this individual exhibits the qualities of Karen J. Switt – outstanding leadership, a role model, and one has made significant contributions to SLA.

Deadline for nominations is close of business on Friday, May 17, 2013

LMD Unit Account  Balances as September 30, 2012

All invoices for the 2012 Annual conference have been paid. The Leadership and Management Division is waiting one reimbursement from one of our 2012 Annual Conference co-sponsors for their share of one our co-sponsored programs.

We have received our 2012 annual membership allotment, which along with sponsorships from our partners have helped the Division cover the significant costs incurred for the programs of the Leadership and Management Division 2012 SLA Annual Conference.

The Division remains on solid financial ground with an overall balance of $50,762.10 and an expected balance of $54,222.49, once the LMD Division receives the outstanding reimbursement owed to it for the 2012 Annual conference expenses.

We currently have $6,405.88 in checking and $1,000.37 in savings as well as $43,355.85 in the SLA Pooled Money Market Fund. We currently have no outstanding liabilities.

Respectfully submitted,

Doris S. Helfer

Hello,

It was great to see everyone in Chicago last month!

For those who attended the SLA conference, and participated in the sessions sponsored by the LM Division, please take a few minutes to answer our short evaluation at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RWHDF3X

We will be closing the link on Friday, Aug. 31st.

Thank you,

Leadership and Management Division of the SLA

Published this year, the Library Marketing Toolkit has been enthusiastically received by librarians and marketers). Bethan spoke to author and LMD member Ned Potter about how he wrote the book, and his top marketing tips.

1) Tell us a bit about how & why you came to write the Library Marketing Toolkit
I was approached by the publisher (Facet Publishing) after myself and Laura Woods had done a fair bit of speaking and writing on marketing libraries and info services outside the echo chamber (see this SLA365 post as an example of what we were on about) – they wanted a very practical text on marketing, to cover all the sectors (academic, public, special, archives) and all the new web tools which have sprung up recently.

For the previous couple of years I’d had the thought that there would only ever be two books I could write: one about marketing libraries, and one about new professionals. Facet said that they’d be publishing both in 2012, and that you’d were already writing that new professionals one, Bethan! So that left one book I could write, ever, and someone was definitely going to be writing that very book that year, and amazingly the publisher had asked me rather than my having to go through the stress of proposing something to them… All in all, then, even though the timing was pretty terrible as my daughter was only a few months old, I felt I had to take the opportunity! It was then or never, so I went for then.

2) What were the best and worst parts of writing the book?
The worst part was fitting it in at all – I was writing it during my own time, with a young family. That was so hard. Also, trying to cover so many subjects in a relatively short amount of space – there were some chapters I felt like I could have written a whole book on just them. In the end the publisher let me get away with submitting something a long way over their normal word-limit, and that was with a huge amount culled in the editing process…

As far as the best parts go, it was the working with people to produce case studies. My dream wish-list of contributors were all able to get involved, meaning that it’s not just me banging on about marketing for 200 pages, but experts in each field telling the reader how they’ve achieved success. There’s New York Public Library talking about Twitter, The National Archive in the UK talking about digitisation; plus contributors like the SLA’s Rebecca Jones, like David Lee King, like the British Library, like Cambridge University. Everyone was generous with their time and they provide real insight into modern marketing in the information environment.

3) You have a companion website that’s showcasing great marketing material. Where do you find this material?
My Twitter network is the main route – you have to love Twitter for ensuring you don’t miss out on the good stuff. It’s also a network from which I found many of the contributors – not just book contributors, but people writing original case studies for the website too. Otherwise it’s the tools you’d expect – RSS feeds, blog-search alerts, information gleaned from presentations and events.

People all over the world feel passionately about certain things and do all they can to keep on top of the latest developments in their fields – the great thing about being part of the information profession is that passion becomes a filtering and sharing system so others can keep ahead of the game too. That’s the aim with the blog, really – and also to document significant library marketing tools and techniques which came about after the date of the book’s publication.

4) You’ve obviously learned a lot about marketing, both in writing the book, and in marketing it! What’s your one key lesson?
I keep changing my mind about this… The one I keep coming back to is to market benefits not features. This is something which library marketers talk about all the time, but it’s still not filtering through nearly enough. People are describing their processes and their content – they should be making it explicit how these things are going to help their users get where they already want to go. Mary Ellen Bates uses the example of databases – the feature is, we subscribe to lots of academic databases on your behalf. The benefit is, we have access to good quality information Google can’t find. The second version makes it immediately apparent how the library is providing a service which will actually make the user’s life a little easier / better / more efficient / richer / whatever it might be.

What I’ve realised is that a lot of people talk about this without actually doing it. I was at an event the other day when we discussed the whole features / benefits thing, and I was mentioning examples of renaming training courses to make them more appealing. The subject of Endnote, the referencing software, came up – someone said ‘we should rename our Endnote course Magic Referencing because it fills your references in for you like magic!’ And we all laughed at this and nodded and agreed it was a good idea, but then I pointed out the key thing here is to actually go and away and DO the renaming! Not just talking about how it’s a good idea within your librarian circle. A course called ‘Magic referencing’ really will get more attendees than one called ‘Referencing using Endnote software’ or whatever. A hundred librarians may discuss what a great idea it is to focus your marketing around benefits rather than features, but it’s the four or five who go away and actually change their approach who will reap the dividends. It’s a quick win, the gains are potentially huge. So DO it! Actually do it.

The other key lesson vying for top spot is the huge importance of marketing strategically – marketing with a plan. One-off promotional efforts rarely have the effect we want them to – it takes a LOT to actually change your users behaviour, so a joined-up approach is not an option; it’s a necessity. Your marketing can’t realistically expect to make people run to your information service every time they see your email or your tweet, but what it CAN expect to do is make your service the first thing your users think of when they need advice, help, good quality information, competitive intelligence or whatever it might be. One-off or generally not-linked-up marketing can work okay, but strategic marketing is so much more successful. It’s worth the time and effort and, unlike the one-off marketing initiatives, you won’t be disappointed with the results…

Sara Batts

One of the strongest ways to help lead a community of users through the web is to join blog discussions when possible. SLA is constantly making an effort to mentor our online communities by keeping information professionals informed and share knowledge more fluently.

When you have a moment, visit the SLA Blog today:
http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog/2012/05/slachat-intellectual-property-and-widespread-access.html

Sara Batts is helping start this conversation. She’s Past-President of SLA-Europe, an SLA Rising Star (2011), and the Library Services Co-ordinator at Kirkland & Ellis International LLP in London.

The video recording for Deb Hunt’s webinar held on March 29, 2012 is now available on the LMD vimeo website: