Special Library Association Meeting Highlights

Citation

Gelfand, J., Sisson, J. and Schader, B. (2002), "Special Library Association Meeting Highlights", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919hac.007

Special Library Association Meeting Highlights

Julia Gelfand, John Sisson and Barbara Schader

The Special Libraries Association held its annual meeting in early June in Los Angeles. Like many previous meetings, the emphasis was to make the conference as relevant as possible to the work of librarians in the special library environment. However, the attendance reflected not only special or corporate librarians but a range of librarians working in the academic and government sectors both in the US and abroad. This report does not give justice to all the simultaneous tracks or interesting content that was introduced in hundreds of sessions but highlights a couple that demonstrate how much technology impacts content utilization.

The theme of the annual conference was "Putting knowledge to work," and you are invited to view the conference proceedings and accompanying content on the SLA Web site at: http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/2002annual/2002presents/index.cfm where each SLA section has captured the significant information. Specifically, the Information Technology and the Hot Topics section embrace technology applications and may be the most relevant to the majority ofLHTN; readers.

Peter Drucker

The first keynote session was very special indeed as Dr Peter Drucker shared highlights of his infamous career as an academic and father of modern day management as we know it. At age 91 he is engaging, fluent and forceful in his inspiration and message that "all work and no outside interests" may not be so fitting today with all the changes in management and leadership in all sectors of the workforce. His encouragement to be involved in the work of nonprofits, participate in corporate and individual charity, consider the contributions of individuals and find dignity and respect among fellow workers were all part of the strong messages he shared. He still has a couple of books in him, he claims; and is still teaching at Claremont, consulting and traveling. One could not help but want to reread volumes of our days as students or entering the workforce, when we first were influenced byManaging the Future; andManaging in Turbulent Times;, or any of his other scores of publications. The entire tenor of the conference was set by this remarkable humbling talk.

Communicating with Generation Y

The SLA Academic Roundtable Breakfast topic this year was: "Communicating with Generation Y." Held very early in the morning, dedication to and curiosity about the topic attracted a very attentive audience. The speaker was Stephen Abrams, Vice-President of Corporate Development for Micromedia Proquest. He shared his thoughts about how the current generational wave (those born between 1977-1994) moving though our libraries will effect what we do.

He introduced us to the idea that the information-seeking behavior of this generational group has adapted to "an information ecology largely dominated by the Web." It is technology-literate in the use of portable and hand-held devices to multi-task and collaborate on projects. The immediate impact on libraries is that information seeking behaviors and tools need to be taught with awareness of how they use these devices daily. We must also be aware of the coming generation of "pocket PC's" and the convergence of cell phone and computing technologies.

Generation Y's characteristics as library users were shared which include: high expectations of information delivery with low patience, associating anything on the Internet with ease of use, and that many are autonomous self-learners.

Abrams suggests we need to explore and create tools that use graphical depictions of how knowledge in a particular subject is organized. There are many new ways to depict data stored in an index and "information landscapes" may be a common teaching tool in the future. He also suggests that the video gaming skills of "Generation Y" will be adapted to create tools that search these "landscapes" in an intuitive fashion for this generation.

He also spent time emphasizing that this generational change is not only with the patrons we will be working with but also with the staff we hire. We need to consider changes in work expectations and adapt our workplace culture accordingly.

The presentation was followed by a group discussion of how we are already seeing these changes in our libraries and how successful are the use of new ways to deliver information such as e-mail and live chat reference services in reaching these patrons.

Molecular medicine in the genomics age

Later this same day, the Biomedical and Life Sciences Division, Medical Section, presented "Molecular medicine in the genomics age." The sponsors who made this program possible were: Bentham Science Publishers, Annual Reviews and CISTI. The three speakers were all highly regarded scientists in their field.

The first speaker was Kevin Scanlon, professor at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, California and adjunct professor at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego. His medical degree is from Yale University where he also was a post doctorate in Biochemical Pharmacy and his PhD in Biochemistry is from the University of London, England. Dr Scanlon is the current President of the International Society of Cancer Gene Therapy. He is on the editorial board of bothCancer Gene Therapy; and theInternet Book on Gene Therapy;. Dr Scanlon is the recipient of several awards, holds seven patents with additional patents in process, and is the author of over 100 publications, articles and invited reviews. Dr Scanlon set the stage for our next two speakers by lucidly describing "Gene therapy in the 21st century," especially the two types of gene therapy –ex vivo; andin vivo;. He also discussed the seminal work of Dr Alain Fisher and then went on to explain regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and stem cell therapy and the patent work associated with those developments. He also described sources for stem cells and adult stem cells and commented on the ethics of stem cell therapy. Dr Scanlon then discussed the gene delivery (viral and non-viral), safety issues and bringing gene therapy to the clinic. His concluding remarks capture the field completely, "Gene therapy offers many potential opportunities to impact the pathology of disease using novel gene delivery, gene repair and gene expression technologies. At the present time,ex vivo; cells and stem cells may offer the best path to therapeutically impact the course of human disease."

The second speaker was Dr John Rossi, chair and professor of Molecular Biology, dean of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope. His MS and PhD are both in Microbial Genetics from the University of Connecticut. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards and fellowships. Dr Rossi is currently on the editorial boards for four major journals,Antisense Research & Development;,Frontiers in BioScience;,Gene Therapy & Molecular Biology; andMolecular Therapy;. Dr Rossi holds 11 patents with others pending, and has authored or coauthored over 150 articles and book chapters. Dr Rossi's presentation discussed actual gene therapy: "Hematopoeitic stem therapy for AIDS." He cogently discussed the economics, clinical protocols, CD4 counts, vital loads and finally, progression free survival. His conclusions were:

• •

  ribozymes can effectively block HIV infection in lymphoid cells.

• •

  better mechanisms for delivery into quiescient, pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells are required to achieve long term engraftment;

• •

  AIDS lymphoma treatment is a model for evaluating new vectors;

• •

  new vectors in development include improved retrovirus and HIV.

Our third speaker was Dr Michele Tennant. Dr Tennant was just promoted to Associate University Librarian for the Health Sciences Center Libraries and the Genetics Institute at the University of Florida at Gainesville where she serves as BioInformatics Librarian.

Dr Tennant's PhD is in Biology from Wayne State University. She was one of six developers and instructors for the NCBI Advanced Workshop for the BioInformatics Information Specialists and is well published and well known as a lecturer. Dr Tennant covered "Information resources for molecular medicine." Dr Tennant thoroughly covered the NCBI resources, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), GeneTests/GeneClinics developed by the University of Washington, GeneCards, Information for Genetic Professionals and finally, discussed PubMed and available tutorials as well as NCBI advanced courses. Increasingly, new publishing and technology trends support each of these products and available access options.

All three speakers were well received and there were many questions for all three long after the session ended. Many individuals in attendance remarked on how adept the speakers were at presenting very complex data and issues in a clear, concise and understandable manner. The level of information was perfect for the sophisticated but non-scientist audience. It is clear that subject specialists working in research libraries need to understand these research directions and new resources that support and document laboratory outcomes.

Julia Gelfand;(jgelfand@uci.edu); is the Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian at the University of California, Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California, USA.John Sisson;(jsisson@uci.edu); is the Biological Sciences Librarian at the University of California, Irvine, California, USA and Program Committee Member, SLA Biomedical and Life Sciences Division. Barbara Schader;(schader@library.ucla.edu); is Head, Collection Development at the UCLA Biomedical Library, Los Angeles, California, USA.