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Vol. 24, No.4/Summer 2002

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NOTES FROM THE CHAIR
By Michael Jesse

I didn't see much of L.A. during conference week, but I did make it to the Santa Monica beach Sunday morning. And then Wednesday evening (as celebrating Lakers fans drove by honking their horns and brandishing brooms) I found myself hiking up and down Hollywood Boulevard because Nina Johnson just HAD to find Joan Bennett's star.

Oh, and in between we had a great conference. As chair-elect, it was my job to plan the conference. They gave me 18 months to do it, which was wayyyy too much time. Hey, I'm in the news business, okay? They should have given me three weeks, tops, and I wouldn't have had so much time to worry about it.

Once the conference started everything went perfectly. Well, almost. The catering nearly didn't show up one night at the suite and the hotel's Internet guy overslept and wasn't there to hook us up when Gary Price and Anne Mintz were waiting to do their live webcast at 7 a.m.

As those of you at about 25 news libraries across the continent are aware, the webcast went off just fine, though about 20 minutes late. Thanks to Carolyn Edds we were able to broadcast the audio of Gary and Anne's presentations via the web. If you missed it the first time, go to www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2002/ and click on the link for that session.

One of my goals this year was to bring more of the conference to those who couldn't attend in person. That live webcast was one step. We also have much deeper post-conference program descriptions this year that we have done previously. Unfortunately, we can't do much to bring you the atmosphere at the suite.

Speaking of which, I'd like to thank our sponsors -- Factiva, LexisNexis, infoUSA, ProQuest and Dialog -- for underwriting the cost of the suite and the audio-visual equipment at the sessions. ProQuest was also the sponsor of the reception at the Annual News Division Banquet, at which awards went to Jody Habayeb, Hannah Sommers, Jim Hunter, Sharon Clairemont and MJ Crowley. See the web site link mentioned above for details on the awards. Past-chair Debra Bade did a great job organizing the banquet and presenters Barbara Semonche, Linda Paschal and Lany McDonald were priceless (as usual).

At last count treasurer Catherine Kitchell had collected $1,374.00 from the silent auction and suite fees. Dana Gordon again did a terrific job organizing the auction.

You can read about each of the conference programs on the web site, but I want to use up some more boldface ink to thank the people who made this all work.

Jennifer Small Evert organized the CE course, which was led by Nora Paul and Kathy Hansen. Peter Johnson moderated the image archiving session, at which David Cappoli and Vicky McCargar spoke about online image resources and the uncertain long-term survival of electronic media.

Gene Balk gave a great lesson on researching the elusive "trend story" and we had a guest from the Ad-Marketing Division show us how trends are spotted in the world of advertising agencies. Linda Henderson moderated that session and she will (thank god) take over conference planning for next year.

The previously mentioned über-searchers, Price and Mintz, gave us more information than our brains could hold. Jim Hunter, no slouch himself on this topic, moderated that session and could have added a few dozen tips himself if there had been another hour on the schedule.

We had a spirited discussion about the Tasini copyright case in a session organized by Cary Kenney. The panel included Richard Geiger, freelance writer Anne Scheck and lawyer Harry Youtt, who was the architect of the Tasini lawsuit. He did manage to get out of the room without bodily harm.

Scott Wilson and Laura Soto-Barra demonstrated their intranets and Sheryl Rosenthal and I showed off the very cool things we do on our public web sites.

For the third day in a row everyone dragged themselves into a 7 a.m. session, this time to hear a roundtable discussion led by Melinda Carlson in which news librarians discussed how they handled the research needs on Sept. 11. The panel included Candace Stewart, Jim Oberman, Linda Henderson and Cary Schneider.

You'd think that would be enough for one conference, wouldn't you? Well we weren't done yet. In fact I saved some of the best for last. Patti Graziano moderated a vendor panel on the very-hot topic of digitization from microfilm. She had vendors representing ProQuest, Olive Software and Cold North Wind - plus some words of wisdom from the battle-hardened John Jansson.

And finally we came back to Jennifer Small Evert, who started the conference with the CE and closed it with a program on PDF Archiving. The presenters included Steve Rubin, Chris Hardesty, Sharon Clairemont and Kathy Drewe.

Oops, I'm nearly out of boldface. Iíll use the last of it to thank Jessica Baumgart for agreeing to become our new webmistress, Leigh Poitinger for staying at the helm of NLN while we look for a new editor and Liz Donovan for her recruiting efforts.

Did I miss anyone? If so, download this file from the web site and place Your Name Here.

Michael Jesse is Library Director at The Indianapolis Star. You can contact him at michael.jesse@indystar.com or at 317-444-6293.


Last Updated: 08/27/02
Leigh Poitinger
newsdivisionweb@yahoo.com