'Ambassadors' sought to promote Alignment Project findings: SLA divisions and chapters are being asked to nominate 'true believers' who will help generate passion for implementing the findings of the Alignment Project, including a name change.

Invoking Seth Godin's notion of "tribes," SLA President Gloria Zamora called on chapters and divisions to identify at least one person to help spread the word about the Alignment Project and encourage discussion about changing the association's name.

"During the conference, I referred many times to Seth Godin's concept of tribes: leaders connecting people to an idea that they support and communicate to others," Zamora wrote in a message to SLA leaders on 7 July. "These people are true believers who are committed to the idea and who spread the idea because of their belief in it. With alignment ambassadors in each SLA chapter, we can create tribes that will build the excitement and the passion toward making these changes."

The alignment ambassadors are expected to do the following:

* Spread the word about the Alignment Project using a Webinar or slide presentation being developed by Fleischman-Hillard in coordination with the new Alignment Portal;

* Identify SLA members with stories about how the Alignment Project has helped them in their job and/or profession; and

* Respond to questions and comments about the Alignment Project and the name change.

The SLA Public Relations Advisory Council (PRAC) is coordinating the alignment ambassadors effort. Names of alignment ambassadors should be forwarded to the chair of PRAC, Jill Strand, at [e-mail].

"Tribes are more organic than the more formal committee structure we are used to using," Zamora noted in her message. "Tribes allow us to spread the word quickly and to create tribes spontaneously, which will grow as our members come to share our passion. There will be challenges involved in using this new concept, but those will be fewer than the rewards."

SLA Debuts Television Network at 2009 Conference

Attendees at SLA 2009 were greeted by the usual signs, posters and banners in the convention center as well as by the unusual--television sets, each one beaming the faces and voices of SLA leaders and staff.

The conference marked the launch of SLA's newest communication tool, SLA-TV, an online video network hosted on sla.org. SLA-TV is designed to further advance the association's mission to promote and strengthen its members through learning, advocacy, and networking initiatives.

"SLA-TV is an integral part of how we will connect with you, face to face, regardless of where you are in the world," says Cara Schatz, SLA's public relations director. "The site will be evolving and expanding constantly. We encourage you to visit often, share your thoughts on how we can improve this community, and even send us your own videos."

The videos currently playing on SLA-TV include testimonials about the 2009 awards recipients and presentations by the 2009 candidates for the SLA Board of Directors.

SLA Board Approves Taxonomy Division

The SLA Board of Directors voted 19 August to approve the creation of a new division for information professionals interested in organizing and structuring information and specifically in planning, creating, and maintaining taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures.

The new Taxonomy Division will become the 27th division within SLA and the first since the Academic Division was approved in January. Margie Hlava, president of Access Innovations, will serve as the first chair of the division.

The scope of the Taxonomy Division encompasses traditional and emerging cognitive approaches to organizing information and the full range of settings in which taxonomies are applied. Areas of interest include the following:

* Strategies for planning and creating taxonomies, such as analyzing existing vocabularies to inform the creation of new ones and selecting technologies and tools to support them;

* Implementation, maintenance, and use of controlled vocabularies for all types of information and all relevant contexts, such as support for search and navigation;

* Standards, governance, and management of taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies; and

* New and emerging approaches to organizing information, such as the semantic Web, ontologies, and tagging, including relationships between user-generated tags and formal controlled vocabularies.

The Taxonomy Division hopes to attract new members who are interested in this topic who have not otherwise aligned themselves with SLA previously. For example, there are 140-plus people on the Taxonomy Tuesdays list in Washington, D.C., and 995 global members of the taxonomy community of practice discussion list.