ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
Following Bill Ivey’s speech was the business meeting. Very few people stayed. That’s what happens when there’s no exciting and contentious issues to be voted on. Last year the room was packed because of the proposed name change. This year there wasn’t even a printed agenda, as the meeting was primarily speeches — and highly self-congratulatory ones at that. A recap of the past year, focusing on all the new stuff. New executive director, new values statement, new headquarters (and yesterday the deal closed on the old hq building — it was sold to the German Marshall Fund), new logo, etc. Two new divisions are proposed: Medical and Government. There’s a new caucus: Archives.
The Treasurers Report concluded that SLA’s fiscal outlook is "challenging but not insurmountable" and expected the association to break even next year.
Ethel Salonen’s incoming president speech was notable in that she began by thanking the staff at her company for their support of her professional activities outside the company. She told stories of some inspiring libraries and librarians and chose Leadership as her presidential year theme. She ended by admitting she’s a hard core Trekkie (Star Trek fan) and admonished us all to emulate Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s admonition to his staff to "Make It So!"
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
www.onlinemag.net
marydee {at} xmission(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
Wow, it looks like it was an eventful event! Back at EContent, we’ve kept an eye on press releases issuing from Nashville and have included several announcements in this week’s enewsletter (a day late due to technical difficulties) including interesting news from Dialog and Open Text.
http://www.econtentmag.com/Newsletters/NewsletterReader.aspx?NewsletterID=168
Michelle Manafy
Editor, EContent & Intranets
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
At the annual meeting Janice LaChance just announced the final attendance numbers for the conference: 2378 members, 204 non-members, and 1257 exhibitors, for a total attendance of 3839. Conference sessions continue until 5:45 today, with tours and other special events still to come on Thursday.
Nancy Garman
Information Today, Inc.
ngarman {at} infotoday(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
The Thomson Corp had a huge presence in the exhibit hall, with the company’s various booths clustered together (Dialog, Gale, West, Thomson Financial, etc.). The Thomson Scientific booth was showing the just released version 3 of ISI Web of Knowledge. The enhanced solution offers new personalization, better search tools, a cleaner and more intuitive interface, and a new journal analysis tool. It also has increased linking power, with customized links to hundreds of new publishers.
Web of Science has been upgraded to version 7 and offers many new navigational aids. Users can now create citation alerts with a single button click. A new tool lets users analyze and refine results by author, publication year, journal subject category, institutions, language, or source title.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com
phane {at} infotoday(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
As organizer of the Buying & Selling eContent conference, I have been especially interested in several sessions geared for global content buyers. There was a good Monday afternoon session on "Going Global," and the Global Content Buyers Roundtable met yesterday afternoon (Tuesday).
Organized a couple of years ago by Janice Keeler and convened this year by Barbara Hirsch, this is an informal group of about 25-30 global buyers, joined by a few vendors. The wide-ranging and constructive discussion covered issues including tracking usage data and customer training tips, as well as some negotiating tactics. Strategies vary by industry sector – financial buyers have more options and thus more leverage than some sci-tech buyers who must have certain sources. The organizers collected names and email addresses, and the group agreed to stay in touch over the year and continue the discussion on email.
Unfortunate conference scheduling placed an excellent panel by the Pharma Division on “Negotiating With Vendors” directly opposite this roundtable, but organizers are already looking to avoid such conflicts in Toronto.
Nancy Garman
Information Today, Inc.
ngarman {at} infotoday(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
And while we’re on the subject of Dialog and awards, Dialog named four new InfoStars during the SLA conference. They are Michelle Burylo, Air Products and Chemicals; Marcia Schemper-Carlock, Verizon Communications; and Marygrace Record and Anitha Steventon, both with Wyeth Consumer Healthcare.
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
http://www.onlinemag.net
marydee {at} xmission(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 9th, 2004
I was taken to task for not mentioning that Dialog was awarded the membership in the John Cotton Dana Circle. The award is for "extraordinary support" of the association.
Extraordinary, indeed. Dialog has been a good friend of SLA for many years.
Happy now, Roger?
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
http://www.onlinemag.net
marydee {at} xmission(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 8th, 2004
I went to the session on branding, which was an informal discussion on how SLA could promote itself better, rather than a formal presentation on branding. Several good ideas were bandied about, such as promoting SLA through other associations and promoting the association and its members with articles in the business press.
After the meeting, I managed to get some face time with Janice LaChance, the Executive Director of SLA. How does she feel after one year in the job? "Wonderful." Her favorite thing about the job? "Interacting with the membership. I revel in the experience." Anything that was a surprise during her first year with SLA? "How readily I was accepted by the membership and the leadership. I’m not an information professional. I was worried they wouldn’t accept me. But this is a group I want to spend time with. They’re open to new ways of thinking." Any regrets? "No."
It’s clear that Janice is energized by the job and that people around her are energized by her.
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
http://www.onlinemag.net
marydee {at} xmission(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 8th, 2004
Following its recent announcement of a partnership with Cymfony, LexisNexis has announced it will stream access to XML news content into Biz360’s market intelligence application, Market360. "LexisNexis and Biz360 have a similar goal–to help customers put information into context," said Elizabeth Rector, senior vice president, Corporate and Federal Markets, LexisNexis.
I met with Elizabeth, who has been in her current position for about 6 months, but has been with LexisNexis for a number of years. She also pointed to the recent agreement for delivery to wireless devices, through its partnership with RIM for its BlackBerry. The company has now added search capabilities for this. She said that the company wants to bring information to customers–however they want it. And, the bottom line is to provide better answers.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com
phane {at} infotoday(.)com
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ITI Bloggers June 8th, 2004
JR Gardner, Sun Microsystems, and Dav Robertson, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at 9:00 this morning. Eric Hill from WC3 didn’t make it, but JR enthusiastically covered dozens of slides about Sun’s internal Semantic Web initiatives. Frequently referring to various complex aspects as “fun,” JR said that SRW (Search/Retrieve Web Services) and SRU (Search/Retrieve Using URLs), and “inference searching,” will ultimate change the way we search, offering richer discovery and more exact results.
Ontologies are a key component of the Semantic Web, and in the second half of the session Dav Robertson described the metadata generation research he has undertaken with Jane Greenberg. At this point we’re not there yet, but this session definitely helped me understand more about the future potential of the Semantic Web.
The conference has been sprinkled with several well-attended sessions about taxonomies and ontologies. Clearly, “taxonomy” is one of this year’s buzz words. Does anyone remember cataloging and controlled vocabularies?
Nancy Garman
Information Today, Inc.
ngarman {at} infotoday(.)com
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