SLA Illinois Chapter Connecting People and Information

By Laura Ikens, President, SLA-Illinois Chapter and Content Integration Analyst, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP

The beginning of a New Year is a time for reflection on the past and looking forward to the future. The Illinois Chapter of SLA had a great year in 2007, with social outings to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ravinia and the Newberry Library. We held dine-arounds and book clubs as well as regular chapter meetings on such diverse topics as change management and strategies for success for information professionals.

And Janice LaChance, Executive Director of SLA, keynoted our one-day conference, held in conjunction with the Metropolitan, DuPage, and North Suburban Library Systems.

Job Well Done

I’d like to thank our Executive Board members whose terms ended in December: Susan Chenoweth, who served a whopper 18-month term as Past President; Karen Krupka, who served three years as Treasurer; and Jane Candela, who when the previous Director moved out of state, gamely stepped into the fold to serve out the Director term. They’ve done a fantastic job and deserve our gratitude.

Thanks also to the many volunteers who served this past year. Whether it was programming, dinner arrangements, public relations, student outreach, writing articles for the Informant, manning the registration tables at meetings, or whatever your contribution, you are what makes our chapter work. Thank you for your contributions!

Compelling Programming

Looking forward, your Executive Board is busily working on upcoming events. Our first meeting is January 18 and will be a breakfast meeting hosted jointly with the Chicago Association of Law Libraries; the speaker will be Kelly Kalmes of Project Knowledge LLC and she’ll be speaking on project management.

Your new President-Elect, Katrina Perez, is doing program planning and will have great meetings for you this year. Her program planning meeting will be on January 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Drinker Biddle. Please contact Katrina (Katrina.Perez@dbr.com) for more info. We need your help and suggestions to make this year’s programming a success!

Volunteers Needed

Volunteers are always needed for the programming committee and for other committees as well. So if you have a particular talent you’d like to put to use, such as in public relations, student outreach, archives, or exercising your writing talents in the Informant, or if you’d just like to work with other SLA Illinois members and expand your network of contacts, please volunteer for any committee.

Feel free to contact me or any other Executive Board member if you’re interested, and we can work on placing you. Our Chapter cannot thrive without volunteers.

Travelling For New Ideas

Katrina and I, along with another of your newly elected Executive Board members, Lorene Kennard, will be going to Louisville next week to participate in the SLA Leadership Summit. We’re all looking forward to seeing what other chapters and headquarters are doing and we’ll report back when we return.

Christina Stoll of the Metropolitan Library System won our Leadership Summit stipend and will also be joining us. Other chapter members who are active in divisions will also be attending and we’ll get them to share their experiences as well.

I’m looking forward to a great 2008 as your Executive Board President and to a fruitful year for the Illinois Chapter. Please let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions on what the Chapter can do for members.

Contact Laura Ikens at ikenssla@gmail.com.