DC Community Members -
As leaders in our Community, we wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with encouragement and support during this difficult time. The Coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on libraries and the information profession. For many of our members, you have transitioned to telework full time and adopted new tools like Microsoft Teams or Zoom to communicate with your management, colleagues and users. For some, though, the response has been furloughs or reduction in employment and other opportunities that we hope are temporary.
While we work through the situation, now is the time in our profession to keep our organizations operating and making informed decisions using the resources that we develop, curate, acquire or create. Our work may never go back to the way it was but we know that the skills of information professionals are critical to organizations of all types and they will find ways again soon to employ us fully. Even those that are currently not working, we want to restate that your skills are needed and that you have allies in the library community who want to help you.
Your SLA DC Community Board has continued to meet and work to support our members throughout this crisis. We've moved a lot of our programming online and we have introduced a number of both formal and informal ways for our members to connect, find support, and find meaning from the challenges we are facing today. We hope you will take a look at the
calendar and join us for an event online sometime soon.
We also want to encourage you to get involved in the SLA DC Community. You can share your time and your talents by joining the Programming Committee for their monthly meetings. You can also let one of us know if you would like to join our Board next year. We'll have elections in the Fall, but we always want and need members to get involved and take a role in supporting our Community. You can participate on a Committee (Awards, Nominations, Fundraising, Communications) and you can shadow a current Board member to learn about their work before taking on a role yourself.
We hope you are taking care of yourself and your family in this difficult time and we both look forward to the time when we can share a room, raise a glass, and celebrate getting together again. Stay well, stay safe, and thank you for being a member of this great community of information professionals!
David Blum
2020 DCSLA President
Richard Huffine
2020 DCSLA President-Elect