SLA Illinois Chapter Connecting People and Information

Calling all SLA IL Chapter members:

On behalf of the Membership Committee, I am happy to launch the 2010 Membership Survey.

The SLA IL Membership Committee is responsible for developing and retaining membership. In order to better educate ourselves about the current chapter’s needs, we created this survey. The results of the survey will be shared with the Illinois Chapter, our state leadership, and leadership at the SLA headquarters level.

It has come to our attention that many of our chapter members are not signed up for chapter discussion lists. This means that those folks are also not receiving notices about meetings, webinars and fun events!

At the Closing General Session on June 16th, SLA Treasurer Dan Trefethen shared some sobering statistics with membership, citing unparalleled participation in reduced membership renewal rates and vendors' reduced ability to subsidize the association as reasons why the Association must begin seeking new revenue models and to re-examine the structure of SLA.

Despite a dose of New Orleans' daily rain which seemed to be an offshoot of the high humidity, the attendance at the Midwest Chapters Open House held on Monday, June 14th at the Sheraton Hotel spoke well for the future of combined endeavors. Though we can't claim an exact total, an eyeball estimate would seem to be over 100 people in the room at any given time.This proved to be a great way for people to sort of meet up, share a bite or a drink on common turf, gather in groups for dinner or head back to rest their feet and brains for the next day.

SLA's 2010 Annual Conference has drawn to a close, bringing those who attended back to Illinois with lots of good food, both for the brain and the belly. For the first time, those of us attending sessions live could see our own members Tweeting about them from virtual classroom access as they attended from home base. This was a powerful demonstration of the connective powers of today's enabling technologies, and perhaps a foreshadowing of things to come. I'll begin by sharing my notes from last Sunday, and update you on other events throughout this week.