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IDEAS EXCHANGE Follow Up

Idea Exchange program held August 11 was a forum for attendees to discuss a challenge/issue in groups, and document and present ideas/solutions.   The program was graciously hosted by Dee MagnoniLibrary/Knowledge Lab Director of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Library, past president of SLA Boston, and current chair of LMD.  SLA President Elect Candidates, David Cappoli and Deb Hunt joined in the collaborative discussion, offering excellent insights and perspectives.

We were all asked to come to the program with one question as a discussion topic. In all they sorted into 4 main categories:  Professional Development, Value of the profession in regards to information overload, Retirement - transition concerns, and Vendor/Publisher fluidity and budget concerns.

As the announcement promised, the format was an experiential and engaging dialogue among attendees, a forum to converse with peers about challenges and/or issues they're facing and to learn best practices, ideas, and solutions to overcome them.

I joined the Professional development table where our discussion centered on a dilemma posed by an attendee whose role as an Information Specialist that she has held for seven years was expanding and evolving toward a new area.  This brought up the common threads we've been hearing about around coping with change, learning new of skills and software, and new expectations.  While this new direction set off a strong current of trepidation, all of us at the table concurred that she was headed in the right direction, and will be acquiring highly marketable skills. The program was a great opportunity and safe forum for her to air her concerns. We achieved the mission and more with the attendee leaving satisfied, with a positive perspective to carry to her work.  

The capstone of each topic discussion involved summarizing the key points. Examples from the Retirement and Value of the Profession groups:

Retirement group takeaways

-Have a transition plan

- Disseminate critical information to team and others

- Place key staff in leadership roles
- Mentoring and grooming staff for leadership roles is very important

Value of Profession takeaways

- Information professionals can position themselves as experts to help contend with information overload

-Find out about your non-users; seek opportunities to outreach to this group to convert them to users.

- Understand the process of how your users use information

-Assist with information needs being conscious of individual characteristics and behavior

-informal communications is very effective

-Meet them where they are

As always happens at events like these, the time evaporated too quickly. Let's encourage Khalilah to think of the August 11 event as the first in a series.

Following the program Dee guided us on a tour of the innovative and exciting Olin library,  offering us a glimpse into a unique academic experience at Olin.

Pictures of the event will be posted shortly. 

Let's continue the idea exchange online. Do these issues/concerns echo similarly to yours? What ideas/solutions do you have that address these issues/concerns. We look forward to your comments on LinkedIn.

As of April 30, 87 people had responded to the Chapter survey. Of these:

•    37.9 attend SLA Boston events once or twice a year; 16.1% say "fairly regularly;" 20.7$ "when they are in my area;" and 26.4% "not yet."
•    90.7% are interested in content programs; 53.5% networking events.
•    Days of the week: Thursdays 63.1%; Wednesdays 60.7%; Tuesdays 54.8%; Mondays 46.4%; Fridays 28.2%; Saturdays 26.2%; and Sundays 11.9%.
•    Times of day: evenings 74.7%; afternoon 36.8%; mornings 28.7%.
•    Times of year: spring 59.8%; fall 58.6%; winter and summer both around 34%.

Other questions asked for preferred locations and for other comments. These responses were all over the place. The message seems to be that we should provide a variety of programs in multiple regions.

21 August 2008: The Boston Chapter of SLA is pleased to announce a contribution to the non-for-profit organization, Games for Health. 

Games for Health is a project produced by The Serious Games Initiative, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars effort that applies cutting edge games and game technologies to a range of public and private policy, leadership, and management issues.

The Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. To date the project has brought together researchers, medical professionals, and game developers to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health care and policy.

The goal of the Games For Health is to help foster and support a community of researchers, developers, and users of applications that use game, game technologies, and game development talent to create entire new ways of improving the management, quality, and provision of healthcare worldwide.

As part of that goal Games For Health also plays a greater role in helping to organize and accelerate the adoption of computer games for a variety of challenges facing the world today.

In addition to the Games for Health conference, the Initiative is working to catalog use of games in health care, to assist current development, collect best practices, share research results, and explore ideas that might improve health care administration and policy.

For more information about the organization, please visit the website: http://www.gamesforhealth.org/