Dear SLA KM members,

I am excited to have the opportunity to chair the KM division this year! In many ways, I believe, in many ways, the foundation of KM is about seeing, understanding, and building relationships. We welcome your ideas and thoughts and have many ways for you to share with other SLA KM members including our listserv, wiki, blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook areas. (To learn more, please visit our Communication Channels page to learn more!)

Thanks to the great efforts of our KM Board, Advisory Board, and Committees, we have many ideas brewing for this upcoming year and an exciting program line-up as well as pre-conference sessions planned for the SLA Annual Conference in June.

I am also helping with SLA's Annual Unconference sessions. If you have a particular topic you would like to be folded into an unconference session in 2010, we want to offer a way to brainstorm ideas and develop a handful of discussion topics prior to our face-to-face sessions at the SLA Annual Conference in June! Share your ideas on our SLA Unconference Wiki's forum.(if you do not have an SLA wiki account, please set one up to contribute to the forum). You are welcome to start a new topic and/or comment on an existing topic.

Thank you, ~ Karen
_____________________________
Karen Huffman
Chair, SLA KM Division and Alignment Ambassador for SLA KM

Video created by SLA members. Song lyrics by Tim Wolf and Richard Geiger played to a melody from the "Wizard of Oz." I created the images based on ideas shared by leadership and members including SLA's blog, KM listserv, Twitter #slaname, and comments posted on SLA's Alignment Initiative wiki. Deadline for name change vote by SLA members is December 9, 2009.

Hello to the KM Division Members

Better late than never, but I thought I should do an introduction given I have been your Chair during 2009.

Up until June 30th 2009 I was an Australian Government public servant for around 30 years. At that time, as is prone to happen in government, I found myself redundant.  This was not a bad thing as I had been toying with the idea of consulting for quite some time and now find myself doing just that.

Over the many years I have worked in libraries, information centres, knowledge services and for the past 3 years found myself right outside the library world in a rural research and development organisation called Land & Water Australia (this organisation is now abolished as of the Federal budget of May 2009).  I have been managing a Program called Knowledge for regional Natural Resource Management (www.lwa.gov.au/regionalknowledge) and come to realise just how fantastic library, information and knowledge skills really are when you find yourself outside the fold.  As one friend told me 'librarians can do anything'.

I have had the delightful experience over the last 3 years of finding that when you say to your stakeholders that you are a librarian - you always get the response "a librarian, thank God you're here".

Now that I am out consulting I also find the word librarian instills a level of trust - after all have you ever heard of a librarian betraying your trust - we are renown for nurturing and helping others - this is a great place to be.  We are the ultimate 'knowledge' workers.  Not only do we know how to find the information a client needs - we also know who they should be talking to and linking up with - we broker the 'knowledge networks' which are so critical to success.

I am now coming to the end of my year as Chair and am very happy that Karen Huffman will be taking over from me.  Karen's technical expertise leaves mine for dead - but I have to confess to being a twitter addict.  You can follow me as neridahart if you so desire - please identify yourself as an SLA member as I do restrict who follows me.

Also, come along and join the LinkedIn and Facebook groups for SLAKM

Nerida

Hello SLA KM Division
I have just rejoined SLA after changes in my career so it is nice to be back in the fold.  No matter what we call ourselves, we are still providing meaningful service by living our calling to connect people with information.

I currently work at Commonwealth Medicine, a Division of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as an information resource specialist based in Boston MA.  I have presented at regional and national meetings on the role of the medical librarian in the reduction of health disparities and public speaking as it relates to knowledge transfer.  I am also a member of Toastmasters International.  Next week I will be delivering a presentation to a local high school on my career and overcoming barriers as a Person with a Disability.

My main reason for joining the KM division is to develop my skills in knowledge brokering to support the project management process and the day-to-day operations of my department.

My research and professional interests focus on how information science and knowledge transfer influence the organization, motivation and "spirituality" or spirit of knowledge workers.  I am currently applying this interest to the knowledge workers who support medical informatics to provide services to the disabled and undeserved. 

When I am not working I enjoy spending time with my wife Michelle and our son Luke.

I look forward to learning more and transferring knowledge. 

All the Best

-Peter

Thought of the Day

"Where your talents and the needs of the world cross lies your calling."-- Aristotle

Links to my publications

DONATIELLO JE, DROESE PW, KIM SH. A selected, annotated list of materials that support the development of policies designed to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities. J Med Libr Assoc 2004 Apr;92(2):257-65. [Pubmed Central]

DROESE P, PETERSON N. Utilization of the medical librarian in a state Medicaid program to provide information services geared to health policy and health disparities. J Med Libr Assoc 2006 Apr;94(2):174-9. [Pubmed Central]

There have many ideas shared on SLA's blog, KM listserv, Twitter #slaname, and comments posted on SLA's Alignment Initiative. Daniel Lee and I thought it might be helpful to see the discussions visually from selected resources. The word clouds were generated by Wordleand the social network graph using Processing.

SLA Alignment Initiative (view as slideshow)
	SLA KM Listserv, 10/25/2009		SLA Blog Discussion, 10/25/2009
	SLA Alignment Initiative Wiki Comments, 10/25/2009		2009 SLA Twitter #slaname, 10/25/2009
	SLA Alignment Initiative Wiki, Twitter, Blog, & KM Listserv, 10/25/2009		SLA @ 100
	Social network graph of #slaname tweet replies Oct 14, 2009 to Dec 11, 2009. Original is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yankeeincanada/4188088640/

A dear friend of mine who is a cultural anthropologist and I co-read Treading Lightly by Karl-Erik Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe and developed five questions that we derived from the book related to cultural perceptions, innovations, intangibles, respect, leadership, and sustainability. Please take a few moments to share your ideas and stories on our SLA KM's wiki virtual book discussion. You do not necessarily have to have read the book to respond.

(Note: Log-in with your SLA wiki username/password. If you don't yet have an account, you will need to set one up before you can contribute your ideas as comments to the wiki page.)

Hi all. I am a new Library Sciences student, and fairly new to KM as well. I am a recently unemployed structured finance attorney, hoping to use KM as an access to return to big law. As part of my schoolwork, I am planning on writing a paper on the progress being made in incorporating KM into large law firms in the US. Any advice as to books or articles I could use in preparing this paper would be appreciated.

I am just adapting to being back in school and hope to become an active member of this group.

Paul