All:
Hope everyone had a safe eclipse-viewing experience last week. We all know that having the opportunity to view even a partial eclipse, let alone a total one, is a rare occurrence. What is not a rare occurrence, however, is the work that HSLI members put into making the organization succeed.
You should all have seen the call for Helen Knoll Jira Scholarship applicants this past Friday. The Jira Scholarship Committee has met monthly since January. The guidelines for this year’s Scholarship, including the funding amounts and the application and judging timeline, are the result of detailed discussions during, and even outside of, those monthly meetings. Thank you to Chair Holly Hudson for keeping the Committee on-task.
Similarly, the Conference Planning Committee has met monthly since January. The dates, format, and theme of this year’s Conference emerged from the meetings that have taken place so far. As the Committee continues to meet as a group monthly, and the Subcommittees sometimes hold their own meetings in-between the monthly meetings, the planning process, from recruiting speakers to planning the budget, moves forward thanks to the diligence of the Committee members. The final product will be the two-day virtual Conference that will take place on Thursday, October 24, and Friday, October 25.
I know many of you had the chance to attend the ad hoc webinar on LibGuides that Stacey Knight-Davis and Debra Smith presented. While the webinar itself was just an hour, not including additional time for questions, many more hours of work went into planning the format and scope of the presentation. This included several conference calls to brainstorm how to make the webinar as relevant as possible to both experienced LibGuide users and novice ones, along with taking the time to create a LibGuide to demonstrate key concepts and best practices.
Even for programs and events that are less structured, such as the monthly Coffee & Conversation (remember to attend the next one this Thursday, April 18, from 3:00 to 4:00 PM), plenty of planning still goes into making them as relevant and worthwhile as possible for attendees. This included discussions between conveners Peggy Carey and Frances Drone-Silvers on how best to incorporate the Journal Club’s focus on the latest professional trends into a more casual environment. The result has been a lively conversation during the monthly gatherings on the challenges attendees face in their daily work and how best to overcome those challenges.
As always, if you have any ideas on how HSLI can continue to ensure that opportunities for member growth and engagement are common occurrences, and not rare ones, please e-mail me, at president@hsli.org or eedwards@ilsos.gov.
Eric Edwards
2022-2024 HSLI President