Thanks to Emily Ford

Emily Ford, OHSU Oregon Health Go Local Project Manager (an MLS librarian), visited SLIM-OR students this past weekend. Oregon Health Go Local (http://www.ohsu.edu/library/golocal/) will be an on-line directory of health related services for the entire state of Oregon. It will be searchable by health condition and integrated with the Medline Plus database. This unique project requires Emily Ford to take on many roles. She has successfully synthesized her outreach, management and technical skills to land as the project manager. It was interesting and informative to hear about Emily’s path to this position and how she hopes to grow this project into a vital community resource. For more information on the project and how to get involved please review the brochure and volunteer job description.

Also a SLIM-OR alumni, Todd Hannon, is the principle investigator of this project. It will be exciting to see this project go live!

Incorporation

We are very proud to announce that SLIM-OR SCALA is now legally registered with the State of Oregon as a Mutual Benefit Nonprofit corporation. This allows us to open a bank account for the organization as well as provides us with a more clear legal and procedural framework to conduct our organization business. Thank you to all of our SCALA officers, especially Crystal Neal, Treasurer, who was a of great assistance in completing this registration process. Special thanks to Perry for her support and agreeing to be a signer on our bank account.

The minutes of our incorporation board meeting are here.

Our newly drafted bylaws are here.

One byproduct of this incorporation is that we now have no members! Before now, we have just considered anyone in the SLIM-Oregon program as a member, but under Oregon State law all members must consent to their membership. Therefore, if you wish to continue to be a member of this organization we will need you to send your full legal name and street address to the corporation’s secretary Candise Branum hermione[dot]danger[at]gmail[dot]com.

Basically, if you become a member you will be able to vote for officers and on any changes to the organizational structure. You will not be required to do anything as a result of your membership, however (no dues, etc.)

Here are the details:
1. You will not be excluded from participating in any SCALA event as a non-member. However, if you wish to participate in any member elections you must consent to be a member. Under Oregon State law we must keep a roster of all members including a street address. This roster is part of the corporation’s public record and is open to the public. In order for someone to view or records they must request to do so. Your address will not be posted to any website.

2. As a member you are entitled to participate in annual elections. Each fall we will hold an election for the next term’s SCALA officers. Also, as a member, your votes are required in order for us to make changes to our Bylaws. If you are not a member you will not be entitled to a vote on these matters.

3. As a member of the public you are entitled to view or organization records. This includes our Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, member roster, meeting minutes (from this date forward), and financial records. Please send a request to view these records to the corporation secretary Candise Branum at hermione[dot]danger[at]gmail[dot]com. Please note that our Bylaws will be the only document posted on our blog http://www.esuscalaor.wordpress.com. If you wish to view any other record please contact Candise.

SLA Conference report from April

April Younglove reports from SLA:

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On Tuesday night I returned from the Special Libraries Association convention in Seattle. I had two simple goals:

1. To accept my scholarship award.
2. To get through the entire conference without paying for any of my own food.

I am happy to report that I was wildly successful in both ventures. I did not need to purchase so much as a soda at the convention. There were plenty of opportunities to stop by division breakfasts, attend vendor lunches and hit the many nightly receptions. Before I left, I told my husband about my aspirations. He said with concern, “But what about networking? What about professional development? Shouldn’t you focus on those goals?”

The secret genius of my original goals, I later discovered at the convention, is that they actually caused me to do far more networking and professional development than I might have otherwise. Getting an award became a natural conversation starter, and by forcing myself to find out where the food was, I had to sit at tables with strangers and meet them. I had to attend events sponsored by divisions like the agricultural division and the military division that I never would even have dreamed of attending otherwise, had it not been for my personal scavenger hunt.

I met and talked with librarians and information professionals from all over the world and from many different organizations. A few of the organizations represented by those I met personally included:

• Liblime
• Rolls Royce
• UNESCO
• The Getty
• Kraft Foods
• The ARMY
• IEEE
• The Presidio of San Francisco
• The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• NBC

Many other information professionals simply worked for themselves. I was so busy going from event to event and seeking the holy grail of a completely gratis convention that I didn’t even have time attend a reception at the Pacific Science Center and the Space Needle. There was so much networking and professional development going on that I even missed out on a behind the scenes trip to the Seattle Art Museum.

What I learned as a first timer at an SLA convention:

• SLA is truly international and is strongly represented in the UK, India and much of Asia.
• SLA Chapters are regional groups. SLA Divisions are groups with a common interest.
• My SLA membership includes access to dozens of free professional tutorials via the Innovation Lab (http://www.sla.org/innovate/) and will soon grant me free access to Adobe software. You should take advantage of these benefits if you are a member!
• SLA is hungry for Gen Xers and Millennials and spends a lot of time, effort, and money trying to attract students and young professionals. I got three separate job offers at the convention!
• Vendors don’t actually know how to answer any of your questions, so you should just take a flier and enjoy the free ice cream/blinky pen/stuffed flying monkey.

Valuable tips that I learned from the sessions I attended:

• Find a person with a job you aspire to have. Ask that person to email you his or her resume. This way you get to see what a successful resume for the job you want looks like.
• On a similar note, ask to job shadow a professional for a day. Most people are flattered and very few people say no.
• The traditional corporate librarian title and job is disappearing. Apply for positions that include the phrase “knowledge management” in the job description.
• Law librarians are increasingly being called upon to do business research, so if you want to do business research consider getting a job in a law library.
• Visual literacy skills are transferable to many areas outside of art museums. For instance: training doctors to read medical images.
• Attitude and aptitude are more important than experience and subject matter mastery.
• Vinton G. Cerf, one of the creators of the Internet and the acting vice president of Google feels awkward on Second Life too.

I posted a Flickr set with some pictures of my SLA 2008 adventure: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprily/sets/72157605686742697/

Minutes for the 6/14/08 officer’s meeting

are here

T-Shirts!

Hello Everyone – SLIM-OR SCALA is having a t-shirt fundraiser to raise money for future SCALA projects.

The shirts will say:

The t-shirts are hand screen printed by a local artist and are available in a variety of sizes and colors. To help off set the initial cost of printing, we are taking pre-orders. Pre-ordered shirts will be $10 with your choice of size and color.

If you would like to purchase a t-shirt, you should email Amy Stanforth at astanfor[AT]emporia[DOT]edu.

Please support SCALA in our fundraiser and help us create a great student organization for future Emporia students!

Sizes available: Adult sm, m, lg, xlg, xxlg and Womens sm, m, lg, xlg

Colors available: The printing can be in Black or White. The shirts are available in a bunch of colors – see here. If you would like to order a color other than white, gray, or black, please be sure to specify the color title and number.

Let Amy know if you have any questions.

Bike-In Movie Night!

SCALA will be holding an outdoor movie night and pot luck this Sat, June 14, at 6 pm. Stacey Kobe from OR-7 has been awesome enough to host the party! She will be providing hot grills, a sweet backyard, and a projector to show a movie outside! We still haven’t decided what movie we will be screening, but it will be something library related.

Who: Emporia students, friends, loved ones, and pooches
What: SCALA social event – bike in movie and pot luck BBQ
When: Sat, June 14th at 6 pm – movie will screen at sun down
Where: Stacey Kobe’s house
549 N Jarrett St.
(right next to PCC Cascade)

If anyone has questions, please contact Annica Stivers – annicalara[AT]yahoo[DOT]com

Report on Northwest Archivists Conference

This year’s Northwest Archivists Conference New Frontiers in Archives and Records Management was held at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska at the end of May.   The sessions were on a variety of topics, ranging from usability studies to minimal processing, managing digital photographs to a discussion about the protocols for Native American archival materials.  Two highlights of the conference included the screening of Eskimo,a classic 1933 film, shot on location near Teller, Alaska, which depicts the daily life of the Inuit people and a session on collections from several Alaskan repositories.

Many attendees took advantage of the long daylight hours to hike in the wooded areas near campus with the hope of spotting a moose or two.  Next year’s conference will be held in Portland, Oregon.

At the conference, it was announced that Robyn Ward (OR-7) had been awarded the Northwest Archivists At-Large Student Scholarship.  Congratulations, Robyn!