The best-kept secrets at SLA Annual Conferences are the contributed paper sessions, which feature SLA members sharing their research and scholarship with their colleagues and peers. This year, approximately a dozen papers were presented, with Dee Baldwin's "Don't Touch that String! There Went the Databases" honored as the best of the group.
SLA is now accepting proposals for papers to be presented at the 2013 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO, to be held 9-11 June in San Diego, California. Paper topics should be related to library science, information management, or other issues pertaining to client service, technology, or administration in special libraries. Paper topics should also be relevant to the conference theme, "Connect, Collaborate, Strategize."
A panel of SLA members will conduct a blind review of the proposals, and the strongest proposals will be selected for development into papers. Proposals will be evaluated on the strength of the ideas, quality of the writing, potential member interest, and relevancy to the conference theme.
Proposed papers must also meet these requirements:
- One least one author must be a member of SLA.
- At least one author must commit to presenting the paper at the 2013 Annual Conference.
- The proposal must be submitted by the deadline (10 December 2012).
- The paper must not have been published in, or submitted to, any other publication or conference planning group.
- The author (and any co-authors) must sign a copyright assignment form that permits SLA to use the paper in various formats.
Deadlines are as follows:
10 December 2012: Applicants submit their proposals in abstract form. Abstracts should be single-spaced Word documents (or plain text) between 250 and 300 words in length, or roughly one page in 12-point type.
14 January 2013: Applicants are notified of the review panel's decisions, and those with the strongest proposals are invited to develop them into full papers.
3 May 2013: Authors submit their papers and signed copyright assignment forms.
9-11 June 2013: Authors deliver 15-minute presentations of their papers during 90-minute sessions.To learn more, read contributed papers presented at past SLA conferences or contact Ruth Kneale at [email protected].