Twitter at the SLA Annual Conference -- Some Tips!

In preparation for the Annual Conference in New Orleans June 13-16th, we've put together some tips on using Twitter to connect with fellow conference goers and with those who cannot attend but would gain from following the events. This list of tips will help you whether you plan to "live tweet" the conference (go here for some useful types on live tweeting, some of which I include below), post Twitter updates or comments as you feel inspired, or just want to be able to find out what's going on at the conference and around New Orleans.

If you tweet:

• Configure your applications on your laptop or smartphone. Be sure to have tools, such as TweetDeck or Twitterrific loaded and ready to go so you can tweet easily and on-the-fly. (from Mark Stelzner's Live Tweeting Tips)
• Use hashtags, which allow users to group posts together by topic (want to know more about hashtags? Click here for info) Use #sla2010 for all goings-on at the conference. Here's an example from Liz McLean. Try to note when DC/SLA members are presenting using hashtag #dcsla (a potential example: Jane Doe from DC proposes paradigm shift in reference! #sla2010 #dcsla)
• Link to useful pages/conference materials in your twitter updates, if appropriate. Use a URL shortening tool such as or http://is.gd. Here is an example of this in action from Chris Olson.
• Use @ symbol when "ReTweeting" posts from other Twitter members or writing to other Twitter members. Here is an example from Peggy Garvin
• Use attributions when mentioning topics or concepts that come up in conference sessions (from Mark Stelzner's Live Tweeting Tips). Here is an example from Marie Kaddel's LibraryFocus Twitter account, covering April's Computers in Libraries Conference.

If you don't tweet, Twitter can still be helpful. Here are some tips:

• If you have a Twitter account, be sure to follow sla2010
• If you don't have a Twitter account, you can just search sla2010 on Twitter's search engine . Here's a direct link to sla2010 search.

2010 SLA Conference Stipend Award Winner Michael Chesnes

by Diane Schnurrpusch

As chair of the 2010 Awards Committee, it is my honor to announce that the winner of the $1,500 SLA Conference Stipend Award is Michael Chesnes, a reference librarian at NASA Goddard Library. Michael has been active in the DC Chapter and SLA. He served as the Chapter Cataloging Committee Chair, organizing three Dine-Arounds and one program for the group. The Physics-Astronomy-Math Division (PAM) benefited from his talents as he assisted and later took over as full editor of the PAM Bulletin. Michael's latest accomplishment was his selection to share his poster, "A Year of Mobile Librarianship at NASA Goddard," at the SLA "All Sciences Poster Session" in New Orleans.

Michael and his colleagues (also SLA members) planned and executed the project that placed reference librarians at several locations throughout the Goddard campus. The project succeeded in increasing the number of reference questions, as well as serving patrons who had stopped coming to the physical library. As Michael explained in his stipend application, "The project fulfills two of the Poster Session's three broad themes. It is a project that expresses a new strategic alignment for Library services within our parent organization and it created a new tool for information literacy, user instruction, and e-learning."

Michael's leadership and innovative spirit made him an ideal choice for the 2010 SLA Conference Stipend award. If you are going to the SLA Conference, be sure to visit him at the Poster Session on June 15. And, watch for more on Michael's conference experience in a future issue of Chapter Notes.