Are you aware of the benefits that your SLA membership provides? Did you know that SLA not only encourages its members to develop professionally, but that it is giving us the tools to move forward in our careers?
Besides Information Outlook showing up in your mailbox monthly, and having the ability to connect with your colleagues via the SLA membership directory, you may not realize that your SLA member ID brings you many more resources and opportunities to help us grow professionally. SLA President Stephen Abram’s theme for the year is “Innovate in 2008” and his vision is coupled with new initiatives being offered by SLA to its membership. Stephen’s vision includes a virtual space for members to evaluate licensed and free software along with tutorials on these applications. In these ideas which he articulated during his keynote address at our chapter professional development program “Charting the Future of Libraries” held at USC in October 2007, Stephen sees an “SLA Innovation Laboratory” where members can continually develop their technological, management, and leadership skills. Most of the resources in the innovation lab will be launched at the annual conference in Seattle this June, but until then there are many benefits which are waiting for you, including:
- Click University, SLA’s online learning community, offers a number of virtual seminars, live and recorded, which are meant to broaden our skill sets, and, in some cases, even provide us with certificate programs in specific areas such as competitive intelligence. Most of Click U’s programming is fee-based, but you should take advantage of the members’ monthly free course that is listed on the main Click U page. The current offering of “Presentation Skills” will be followed by “Managing a Virtual Office.”
- SLA’s Online Libraries, available via Click U, are collections of material focused on leadership and management and knowledge management. These “ebraries” can help you to “become a more effective leader to examining best practices from the world's most successful CEOs these databases are applicable throughout an employee's career path.”
- Factiva News Connections is an alert service that brings you subscription-only news on a variety of subjects, including Web 2.0, copyright, search tools, and vendors and their products. Here is one way of keeping tabs on our quickly changing environment.
- The SLA Podcast Center delivers selected content from Information Outlook, which you can download and listen to at any time.
- SLA’s Consultation Service is a free, members-only benefit that can help your organization develop its information requirements.
- The Information Portals provides a gateway to over 40 different topics, including benchmarking, international library resources, and digital libraries.
With one of its core values “innovation and continuous learning,” SLA continues to bring you and I, its members, the tools and resources to help us succeed. Now it’s time that we take advantage of them and look forward to more that will be coming in the future.
Hope to see you in Seattle!
Sincerely,
David Cappoli
dcappoli@ucla.edu
