President's Corner: James King Welcome to our professional development issue! Developing our core competencies and skills has always been important to our careers. However the current economic situation combined with the dramatic changes that digitization has brought now makes continued and strategic professional development absolutely critical. The obvious approach to professional development is attending school – we’re honored to include essays and biographies from our chapter college scholarship award winners! This award will help each of them to continue their education and encourage participation in professional associations like ours. DC/SLA also helps with less formal approaches to professional development. Networking with peers to validate skills and learn new areas to explore, online training resources available through Click U, and volunteering in our chapter are all ways to build new skills. Through involvement with DC/SLA, any member can learn leadership skills and practical technology skills. For example, just over this past year I’ve experimented with Google Docs as a way to quickly create Web forms to gather information, Doodle.com as a way to figure out times when a group of people across organizations can meet, honed critical organizations skills to plan and execute events, and used software such as WebEx and now DimDim to handle remote meetings. If you’d like to develop your skills in a safe environment outside of your work setting, please volunteer! Soon after this issue is released we will learn who will be running our association and our chapter next year. As a member of the 2011 SLA nominating committee, I’m already looking for a few good men and women who are ready and willing to lead our association forward. If
September 2010 Volume 71, No. 5 Inside this issue: President’s Corner ............................. 1 Upcoming Chapter Events ................ 3 Upcoming Library Related Events ................................................ 4 The Way Forward .............................. 7 Career Column .................................. 8 Census Bureau Dedicated to Information Literacy .......................... 9 Candidates Offer Real World Answers Virtuall ............................................ 10 SLA Packed with Events in 2011..... 11 Volunteers Gain Competitive Edge.................................................. 12 Retirement Launches Librarians to New Journeys ........... ..................... 13 CUA-SLA Wins 2010 SLA Student Group Merit Award ........................ 15 CUA-SLA Gets Up Close with Special Libraries .......................................... 16 Meet the 2010 DC/SLA Scholarship Winners ............................................ 18 DC/SLA Members Were All Ears at NPR ................................................. 22 The Last Word: Q & A with Kee Malesky, author of All Facts Considered ....................................... 24