John Coll is Head of Access at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. He is responsible for all aspects of access at the Library including reading room services and enquiries, events and exhibitions, learning and outreach, digital access as well as the Library’s Visitor centre including its shop and café. John graduated from University College Dublin with a degree in history and politics and a post-graduate diploma in Library and Information Studies from the College of Librarianship Wales. He has over 25 years’ experience in information provision and has worked in a variety of other organisations including legal libraries and an investment bank. He has a strong interest in resource discovery, audience research and the application of technology to improve customer services.
Dear SLA member it hardly seems as if it is now more than half way through my term of office as President of the European Chapter. It has been a busy seven months for both myself and the Board, and It now seems an appropriate time to take stock and remind members what has taken place over these past seven months.
Events
Our events programme is a key activity for SLA Europe and we have continued to deliver a range of social events over the year to date. These have ranged from our very popular winter warmer quiz, our spring social event and most recently, our well-attended summer soiree held at the amazing Dow Jones building in London. As well as social events, for those keen to participate in web based learning we were also pleased to publicise the SLA course in Networking and Social Media that took place in February. The European Chapter is itself part of a global community so we were also pleased in that same month to promote a new monthly chat with members by SLA President Tom Rink. The big event for SLA each year is of course the international SLA conference that took place in June in Philadelphia. SLA Europe was active in this conference and co-sponsored our excellent international reception at the conference.
Early Career Conference Award
SLA is an association that seeks to help develop and enhance its members’ careers and professional development. SLA Europe itself has for a long time supported those in the early stages of such development. Our Early Career Conference Award (ECCA) is designed to assist students and those within the first five years of their profession attend the annual conference. The success of the Awards in developing the confidence and careers of attendees is evident and it is fitting that both our Past-President and President –Elect, Marie Cannon are former ECCA winners! We were very pleased to be able to co-sponsor three awards this year with the worthy winners being Mathias Ammon, University of Cambridge, Helen Doyle, Norton Rose Fulbright and Helen Monagle, Manchester Metropolitan University. You can read Helen Monagle’s own experience of attending the conference on our Blog. We would also like to thank the SLA sci-tech, legal and academic divisions who generously co-sponsored the awards this year. The work between these divisions and us continue to highlight SLA’s commitment to collaborating at an international level.
Changes to the Board
Our own European Chapter Board has also gone through some changes over the course of the year to date. Sarah Hume has kindly stepped in to take over the role of Secretary from our President-Elect Marie Cannon and Anneli Carter is stepping down as Events after serving in this role for the past two years. Andrew Graves has generously agreed to take on this role. We also plan to enable out Treasure, John Latham to step down before the end of the year and will be seeking a replacement for this role. The Board is extremely grateful to all those who serve or have served on its Board or committees and through giving their time, allow SLA Europe to continue to thrive and serve its members.
Survey of members
In 2016 SLA Europe conducted a survey of its members as well as including in its sample non-members who had attended events or participated in our discussion list. We had an excellent response to this with just under 90 replies. The Board is actively considering the results of the survey and in a future blog update I will provide more information and our intended responses. A number of topics were prevalent in the survey results but two key requests were for more events outside London and more webinars. The Board recognises both the popularity of our London based events but also appreciates that more needs to be done for those living in different parts of the UK and throughout Europe. We are looking at ways that we can effectively respond to such requests and were very pleased at the number of respondents who expressed a willingness to support a range of SLA activities including events themselves. More information to follow on the survey before the end of the month.
Looking ahead
For the remainder of the year will be focusing a number of key issues:
- Refreshing the Board. We recognise that a number of Board members have or plan to step down over the year. The strong response from members to our Survey gives us the opportunity to look to refresh and strengthen our Board and committees so as to continue to serve our members,
- More events over the course of the year and some outside London. Our survey highlights the popularity of our events but also the wish by some members to host some of these outside London. We will work with those who expressed an interest in assisting here to see if we can pilot some of these in other locations as well as rolling out further events in London.
- More webinars. As members expect more services online and through our survey have expressed an interest for webinars we will be looking to see how we can deliver such webinars to our members.
The Board remains committed to ensuring SLA deliver a range of activities that are relevant to our European members. If you have any further comments or questions do not hesitate to contact me at or if you plan to be in the beautiful city of Edinburgh let me know and if possible we can meet up for a chat!