Texas Chapter Highlights January to December 2010
The year began with event planning for the Fall Annual Meeting in Houston and the Texas Chapter Reception in New Orleans.The Texas Chapter Board Meetings were held in College Station on February 6 and in Houston on October 14.
On March 31, the chapter held an online and site-hosted (Houston, Austin and Dallas) meeting to hear Leslie Reynolds’ report from the Leadership Summit including highlights about the keynote presentation given by James Kane.The Houston area group held five happy hour social events throughout the year, which were co-sponsored by a group of Rice University librarians.The Austin area group reached out to library school students at the University of Texas by setting up monthly tours to local employers: for example on November 5, they toured Tokyo Elektron where Barbara Denton gave a couple of hours of her time to explain the company and her position. And in November, San Antonio area librarians met for a holiday luncheon. SLA Dallas-Fort Worth area group held two events, one with online attendees.
Two SLA Conference Stipends were awarded to Yumi Yaguchi of Texas Tech University Health Science Center (professional stipend) and Stacee Millangue of University of Texas at Austin (student stipend). The Information Technology Division presented the Texas Chapter with the Outstanding Chapter Technology Programming Award for the 2009 Annual Fall Meeting. SLA Texas Chapter New Orleans Conference Reception was held Monday, June 14. Approximately seventy-five people attended the event held on the New Orleans Creole Queen. (It stayed docked throughout the reception and attendees were treated to a rainbow at the end of the reception.)
In October 2009, it was announced that the SLA Texas Chapter Archives are accessible to all members and the public at large. The SLA Texas Chapter Archives are physically housed at The Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2010, board members David Brackus and Karen Leeseberg developed procedures for the archives and what items would be retained and deposited annually.
The SLA Texas Chapter Annual Fall Meeting was held Friday, October 15 at the Elizabeth Rockwell Pavilion, MD Anderson Library, at the University of Houston. Approximately 40 information professionals attended the event, which was sponsored in part by Dow Jones, Knovel, Ovid and IEEE. This year’s meeting was a spotlight on being Future Ready. Opening keynote speaker Bill Gilmer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas spoke on the Texas economy and recession recovery, while closing keynote speaker, SLA President-elect Cindy Romaine talked about how to be future ready. We also had a session on Going Mobile: 60 Gadgets and Applications in 60 Minutes by Barbara Fullerton, Greg Lambert and Scott Riggins. The Texas Chapter conference stipend award winners Stacee Millangue and Yumi Yaguchi presented. The attendees also participated in unconference discussion roundtables.
In November, the chapter elected their 2011 executive board members: April Kessler as President-Elect, Michael Smith as Secretary and Margaret Carroll as Director for Strategic Planning.
In December, work commenced on our Texas Chapter best practices wiki hosted by wiki.sla.org with the goal of developing a stronger institutional memory for our leaders now and in the future.
