Join us for some great food and networking with your colleagues at one of our Networking Dinners!   Please contact the hosts to RSVP.

Cary: February 21, 2012  6:00pm
Cafe Caturra
Stone Creek Village
600 Ledgestone Way
Cary, NC 27519
http://www.cafecaturra.com/locations
Host: Jill Morris jill@nclive.org

Durham: February 22, 2012  7:00pm
Mellow Mushroom
410 Blackwell St, Suite 100
Durham NC 27701
http://www.mellowmushroom.com/durham
Host: Thea Allen theaallen@gmail.com

Cary: February 23, 2012  11:00am – 2:00pm—-This will be a catered lunch hosted by Iconitel
Iconitel
1200 SW Maynard Rd. Suite 201
Cary, NC, 27511
Host: Susan Lelito  susan.lelito@iconitel.com

Raleigh: February 27, 2012  6:00pm
Relish
5625 Creedmoor Road
Raleigh NC 27613 (Corner of Creedmoor and Millbrook)
http://relishraleigh.com/
Host: Susan Forbes forbes16@gmail.com

Greensboro: March 7, 2012  6:00pm
Kathy Bradshaw
Graffiti’s Bistro
301 F Pisgah Church Road
Greensboro, North Carolina 27455
http://www.graffitisbistro.com/
Host: Kathy Bradshaw akbradsh@uncg.edu

Congratulations are in order for UNC-SILS student and fellow NCSLA member Susan Craft!

Susan was this year’s Sara Aull Student Paper Award winner and her paper has been accepted as a contributed paper for this year’s SLA conference in Chicago.  Presentations will be taking place on Monday July 16 and Tuesday July 17 from 4pm to 6pm and Wednesday July 18, 12pm to 2pm.

More information regarding Susan’s paper and presentation will be following in NCSLA’s February newsletter.

The votes are counted and here are the results for NCSLA’s new officers:

President-Elect: Terry B. Hill

First Year Director: Thea Allen

Secretary: Stephanie Brantley

Treasurer: Mary Krautter

Thank you to all our excellent candidates for their willingness to stand for election.  We are so fortunate to have such talented SLA members in our chapter. And many thanks to Rebecca Vargha and Mary Lane for serving as the NCSLA Nominating Committee.

On Friday, May 13, 2011, information professionals and graduate students from across North Carolina gathered at the Joseph Bryan Jr. Auditorium at Guilford College in Greensboro for CareerWise 2011. This career focused event was jointly sponsored by the North Carolina Chapter of the Special Libraries Association and the North Carolina Library Association’s Round Table for Ethnic Minority Concerns Roundtable (REMCo) and  Reference & Adult Services Section (RASS).

Mary Scanlon, Business Librarian at Wake Forest University, and Kathy Makens, Head of Adult Services at the South Regional Branch of the Durham County Libraries, gave a presentation entitled Social Networking for Career Advancement: it’s not your teenager’s Facebook. This talk provided important tips for managing and optimizing your professional presence on social networking sites, and provided insight into helpful tools that can be used to make the job search more efficient and successful.

Ellen Shlom, Area Sales Manager for Belk, Friendly Center, talked to the group about appropriate dress for interviewing and in the workplace. Ellen gave many helpful tips about looking your best so that you feel confident and project a professional image. To illustrate Ellen’s points, several members of NCSLA and NCLA modeled clothing during the presentation.

After a break for networking and snacks, attendees participated in a panel discussion on career and job seeking advice. The panel included human resources and hiring professionals representing public, academic and corporate libraries.  Kim Hailey of the Greensboro City Public Libraries, Tiffany Allen of the UNC Chapel Hill Library System, and Mariel Christian of RTI International all provided invaluable tips on resumes, cover letters, and interviewing. The panelists took many questions from the audience, making for an interactive and highly relevant session.

CareerWise 2011 was a great opportunity for professional development and Networking!

“The Power of You”- Negotiation Skills Workshop was presented by NCSLA on April 29th at the Duke Conference Center in Morrisville, NC. The four-hour workshop was sponsored by Inconitel Consulting Services and was led by Joanie Olivier, Executive Partner and founder of Iconital, Inc. It was a well- attended event with an audience consisting of librarians, information professionals, and library science students. Joanie began the presentation by explaining that negotiation is not just limited to purchases, but every aspect of our lives. Negotiations take place in the home, the office, and social circles. It can encompass everything from dinner plans to exchanging ideas or concepts. Joanie further explained that there are two approaches in negotiations. The win-win approach is a collaborative effort that leaves both parties happy while the win-lose approach results in one party being happy and the other unhappy. The number one rule in a successful negotiation experience is to know what you want and at what point you will walk away from the negotiation. The workshop continued with participants learning about the top four personality styles. The participants were broken down into four groups according to their personality style. Volunteers were asked to role-play negotiations between the different personality groups. This active learning portion gave participants an opportunity to gain experience negotiating with different personality types. The presentation concluded with participants creating a negotiation strategy for a simulated negotiation.  The participants enjoyed the presentation and are ready to apply their new negotiation skills.

For the past two years, the NCSLA Board has put out a programming survey to gauge the interests and needs of the membership. A big thanks to everyone who has participated in these surveys – your feedback has been critical in targeting topics and speakers for our events and I hope you’ll continue to provide this feedback in the future.

I wanted to “close the loop” so to speak and share our results with everyone. We took an open-ended approach this year and there was quite a bit of raw data to work with. The first thing I did was “code” each response to consolidate similar answers. Example – responses regarding the librarian’s role as teacher, instructor, and trainer, were coded as “outreach/instruction”. Next, I created word clouds for each of the three open-ended questions in the survey: What skills do you think are most valuable for information professionals in today’s marketplace? What areas of training would be particularly beneficial to you? What did you not learn in Library School that you have been/are required to know/do in your current role? Finally, I created one large word cloud using the responses to all three questions since they are all driving towards the same point – the skills we need most today. This visual representation made it possible to identify our hot topics “at a glance”.

I shared the full report with our Board at the January meeting – a few of the most popular topics include:

Communication Skills
Return on Investment (ROI)
Budgeting
Outreach/Instruction
New Technology
Negotiations
Marketing
Management
Creative Thinking
Social Networking
Copyright

Several members mentioned increased opportunities for casual face-to-face networking and we were excited with the high number of volunteers to host February networking lunches and dinners. NCSLA coordinated with Joanie Olivier of Iconitel to present a negotiation skills workshop which also spoke widely to boosting communication skills in general. On May 13^th the chapter is co-hosting CareerWise 2011 with NCLA, a career focused workshop for librarians and information professionals in all fields.

Topics on tap for the rest of the year include: budgeting, presentation skills, a panel on ROI, hiring from a management perspective, and more networking opportunities. Stay tuned for additional details on these events! As always, please let us know of any events you might like to host.

-Tiffany Lopez
2nd Year Director

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