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ChapterNews
1
Vol. 76, #4 Fall 2004
Letter from the Chapter President
Dear Chapter Members
 As President of the Chapter, it’s my duty to keep reminding everyone that thereis still “no free lunch” in The Big Apple. Our Past President,
 Agnes Mattis
pre- viously wrote to you about the financial realities facing our Chapter. In priorarticles, she had covered two trends in particular:
▲
 The rising costs of venues and catering
▲
 The diminishing levels of sponsorship There is little that we can do about the rising cost of venues and catering. A typical venue for 150 – 200 attendees, including A/V set up, now ranges between $800and $1,000. Many of our members no longer have the option of offering a free venue for Chapter events. Furthermore, the refreshment services for many of our venues have been outsourced as profit-making ventures with minimum per-person costs typically starting at $25. If we were planning an event with wine,beer, soda and water for 150 attendees, this would add $3,750 to the cost of theevent. And, if we were paying a modest speaker fee, combined with hotel andtransportation costs in NY, this could easily add another $1,250. In this example,the total cost of a single program could easily reach $6,000.For these reasons, we experimented last year with “refreshment-free programs”(as opposed to the “free-refreshment programs” of our heavily sponsored past). What we found was that if programs were interesting and current enough, thenthey were well attended anyway, and few people actually complained about a lack of refreshments. With this in mind, we will continue to use this cost-savingstrategy, whenever it’s needed this year.But I’m also happy to report that the Board has a new plan to “market our assets”as a Chapter to potential sponsors. How will we do this? Primarily, we will do itby reminding sponsors of our buying power. The NY Chapter consists of 1,300members, representing about 11% of the entire Association. And an even moreimportant point, but one that is difficult to put an actual number to, is the totalamount of revenue that the NY Chapter represents for information providers. Think of the size of our Business and Finance, Legal, Advertising and Marketing,and other divisions comprising our member base here in NY. We know that theNY Chapter accounts for a huge volume of dollars spent on information, and wesuspect that it may be even greater than the 11% that our membership repre-sents within the Association. We will be actively reminding our sponsors of thesesimple facts, to help ensure that we garner our fair slice of the sponsorship pie. When economic times were good, the Chapter could ask sponsors for assistanceon a program-by-program basis throughout the year, and vendors were forthcoming with funds. This no longer works. We realized last year that we needed a newmodel for sponsorship, and the Chapter Board (along with our Ways and MeansChair,
Nancy Bowles
) has worked out a better strategy for approaching sponsors.
ChapterNews
 Volume 76,#4 Fall 2004
IN THIS ISSUE
Message from the President..........1Message from theDirector of Publications.............3Basic or Not So Basic? BusinessResearch at SLA Nashville.........5Chapter Announcements:..............7Meet the Boardand Advisory Council.................8LaChance Outlines Plan for SLA..11In the Beginning….......................12Welcome New Members.............13From Student to Librarian:SLA-NY is with you all the way..14 A River Runs through It:University of Arizona’sKnowledge River Project.........15Mentors in Libraries.....................16St. Clair Suspends KnowledgeServices Column: Concentratingon SLA’s Centenary History.....17Diversity Leadership DevelopmentCommittee’s Career DayBrunch.....................................18
ADVERTISERS
Dialog...........................................10Donna Conti Career Resources.....5EBSCO...........................................3EOS International.........................12Gatta Design & Co.......................15Global Securities Information, Inc...4InfoCurrent...................................17Pro Libra......................................14
(Letter continues on page 2)
 
ChapterNews
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Vol. 76, #4 Fall 2004
ChapterNewsNew York ChapterSpecial Libraries AssociationSummer Vol.76, No.3
PUBLICATIONSCHEDULE
ChapterNews,
the bulletin of the New York Chapter of theSpecial Libraries Association,
is published four times a year.
Deadlines for submitting materials:
Fall issueSeptember 24 Winter issueDecember 15Spring issueMarch 15Summer issueMay 14
Submit all material to:
 Jennifer Kellerman
ChapterNews 
EditorE-mail: jkellerman@paulweiss.com
Submissions:
 Articles on topics of general interest to infor-mation professionals and the New York Chapter are welcome. Authors can send submissions via e-mail as text file or MS Word for Windows attachments, or with article in the body of the e-mail. Please use single-line spacing, Courier font, withminimal use of boldface and italics. Include a byline with yourfull name and place of work.
ADVERTISING
inquiries should be addressed to:Nancy Bowles235 East 22nd Street, Apt 9LNew York, NY 10010 Telephone: (212) 679-7088 orE-mail: nancy.bowles@verizon.net
Special Libraries Association 
assumes no responsibility for thestatements and opinions advanced by contributors to the Associa-tion’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent theofficial position of Special Libraries Association. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product by Special Libraries Association.
CHAPTERNEWS STAFF
Director of PublicationsMike Gruenberg
ChapterNews 
EditorJennifer Kellerman Advertising Manager Nancy Bowles WebmasterMichael Rivas Assistant EditorBrenda LingGoing forward, we will be soliciting sponsors with twooptions for supporting the chapter, as follows:
▲
 A general contribution to support the Chapter onan annual basis
▲
 A targeted contribution that would be used for specific,high profile events, programs and scholarships.In the first option, an annual contribution would enablea sponsor to plan their contribution budget annually, which is also to our benefit in that it would enable us toprepare a budget for activities ahead of time. Sponsors would receive appropriate recognition by the Chapterbased on the total annual dollar amount (i.e., range) of their contribution.In the second option, we will offer sponsors the chanceto “fully fund” the cost of particular events, which wouldentitle the sponsor to “exclusive name recognition” forthat event (e.g., The (insert sponsor name) Hot TopicPanel Discussion). Going forward, we will select a cou-ple of high-profile events and market them to sponsorsin this manner. The last important aspect of this strategy is to providemuch greater “recognition” to our sponsors, using theChapter’s website and other communication tools (i.e.,
ChapterNews 
and the Discussion List). In doing this, we will also be publicizing our sponsors in an open, fair andobjective manner, based on their actual level of supportto us. We are confident that this new plan will helpincrease sponsorship dollars for our Chapter. Thomas Pellizzi
(Continued from page 7)
 NY Chapter members enjoy cocktails before the start of the Fall Chapter meeting. Read about it on page 11.
SLA-NY 
SNAP-SHOT
 
Message FromThe Director of Publications
By Mike Gruenberg
It’s Your Right ANDResponsibility
B
 y the time you read the next issue of 
ChapterNews 
,there will have been a presidential election. No,not the one for the New York Chapter! And, notthe one for President of SLA. It will be the election forthe President of the United States.I just came back from a vacation in Europe. According tothe preference polls taken there, if the Europeans could vote, they would overwhelmingly vote for Kerry. Eventhough they cannot vote for our President, the Europeannewspapers and television news programs are keenly aware of our politics and report on it daily with great vigor. On our cab ride to the airport in Venice, we had aspirited discussion with our Italian driver on the effectsof U.S. foreign policy in the world. In Vienna, in anothertaxi, our Egyptian-born driver, who has been a residentof that city for 25 years spoke with great insight on howthe U.S. is viewed in Austria.I could relate to you what these and other people we metin Europe had to say about the candidates for our highestoffice, but I won’t since this column is not designed to bea political soapbox. What I will tell you is that theirthoughts and concerns energized me to become moreinvolved in the upcoming election. While I cannot say that I have no interest in which person you decide to votefor, I can say that not voting is sinful. The right to vote isan important right that, quite frankly, is not enjoyed by alarge majority of the world’s eligible for voting popula-tion. In some cases, the vote in certain countries is simply a ruse to get people to think that they are voting eventhough there may be one candidate or many candidatesfrom the same political party. At times, we may havetrouble differentiating the policies of our candidates, butin essence, there are two major parties presenting twocandidates. For that, we should be thankful.Over the years, the American public could rightfully or wrongfully be accused of not making the best choices when they elected a President. However, the reality isthat someone was chosen. The person with the most votes usually wins. Well, maybe not all the time, but nev-ertheless, votes were taken and the system produced a winner. I’m not here to criticize the system, but I amhere to criticize those who do not vote.September has always represented to me a new begin-ning. It’s almost as though September is another New Year. For example, when we come back from summer vacation, September was the beginning of a new school year. In the world of sales, September means the begin-ning of the push to end the last four months of the yearon a positive note. In every fourth year, September rep-resents the beginning of the two months leading up tothe November election.Please take the time to review the positions on the issuesof each candidate from the President on down to yourlocal legislators. Voting is a right and you need to knowthe issues in order to make a logical choice. Take time to watch the three Presidential and one Vice Presidentialdebates. Seek out your local elected officials and find out what they stand for. Most of all, exercise your right andresponsibility to vote.
 Michael Gruenberg
 is a Strategic Accounts Executive at OneSource Information Services. He can be reached atMichael_Gruenberg@onesource.com or 646-336-4128.
ChapterNews
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Vol. 76, #4 Fall 2004
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