SLA news

Information Outlook, April, 2006

Abram Wins SLA President-Elect Seat in First Online Board Election

Stephen Abram, vice president of innovation at SirsiDynix and a leading thinker in the North American library community, has been elected to serve as the association's next president-elect. His term as SLA president will begin in January 2008.

The 2006 election was the first SLA has conducted using an Internet-based voting system. Of the 2,870 members of the association who voted, 93 percent cast their ballots online.

The newly elected board members will be installed at SLA's 97th Annual Conference in Baltimore in June.

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Abram, who holds an MLS degree, was president (2004-2005) of the Canadian Library Association, president (2002) of the Ontario Library Association and has served twice on the SLA international board of directors. He also has held leadership positions in the Toronto Chapter, CASLIS, and SLA's Leadership and Management Division.

Abram has been listed by Library Journal as a "Mover and Shaker," one of the "key" people influencing the future of libraries and librarianship. He is a recipient of SLA's John Cotton Dana Award and is an SLA Fellow.

He was Canadian Special Librarian of the Year and Alumni of the Year for the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies.

A regular speaker at library and information industry conferences, he also writes the monthly column "Information Tech" in Information Outlook.

Others elected to board positions are:

Treasurer

Sylvia James, principal, Sylvia James Consultancy, West Sussex, U.K., has been working for the last 17 years as an independent management and research consultant. Previously, she worked for 20 years in various positions in research for financial service companies and multinational companies, including eight years as head of research and information at Credit Suisse First Boston, the international investment bank, in London. She lives and works in England.

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Her specialty is business research, particularly researching and analyzing companies and preparing individual research projects for clients. From this experience, she designs training courses on business information, which she presents all over the world. She makes regular contributions to Business Information Alert, Business Information Review, and BF Bulletin.

Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect

Libby Trudell, senior vice president, Dialog, Sunnyvale, California, heads a global team responsible for programs such as Quantum2, the customer advisory board and outreach to MLIS students. A member of the executive team, she serves as the liaison to SLA and other associations that serve information professionals. In this position, she provides insight on customer needs, and is involved in corporate initiatives such as the knowledge sharing council.

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Previous management roles at Dialog include marketing, customer services, product development, and strategic planning. Earlier in her career, she worked in several library consortia, helping members implement services such as OCLC, RLIN, and electronic mail. She authored a report on needs for a regional interlibrary loan system, served on the editorial board for Library Information Technology Association journal, and co-authored the book Options for Electronic Mail. Her bachelor's in music is from Tufts University and her MLS from Simmons.

Division Cabinet Chair-Elect

Robyn Frank is the principal of Robyn Frank Strategic Partners, a management consulting organization that specializes in assisting professional information managers with library reinventions, performance measurement, benchmarking, library marketing, and change management.

She retired from the federal government in September 2005, where she had spent more than 34 years as a career federal librarian.

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From 2002 to 2005, as director of library and research services for the Executive Office of the President, she spearheaded a library reinvention effort that resulted in enhanced products and services. Additionally she served on the Federal Executive Board of the Federal Library and Information Center Committee.

From 1998 to 2002, she worked at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, where she was involved in the creation of new centralized information resource centers that served CRS analysts. She also conducted a benchmarking study of best practices in special libraries.

Before that, she created and developed specialized information centers on various topical areas, such as food and nutrition, at the National Agricultural Library.

At-Large Directors

Kate Arnold works for the British health service as head of content at National Health Service Direct, a multi-channel service offering health information and advice on the Internet, digital television, and via the telephone.

She is responsible for the development and maintenance of two of the Web site (www.nhs-direct.nhs.uk) and digital TV, NHS Direct Interactive.