Yesterday, September 9, 2015, was the first SILSSA general meeting of the fall semester! Thank you to all who attended. We introduced SILSSA and our officers, and reviewed some of the great plans we have for the upcoming school year.
If you were unable to attend, the minutes for the meeting, along with the SILSSA Constitution and past meeting minutes are available in our public Google Drive folder.
We’re really excited about the events we have planned for this fall, and are still looking to add more trips, activities, and workshops that best reflect the needs and desires of the SILS student body. If you have a suggestion for an event, a library you’d like to visit, or a speaker you’d like to hear, please email us at silssa.pratt@gmail.com, or speak to one of us in person!
During our meeting, we proposed that SILSSA offer a number of registration-fee scholarships to ALA Midwinter this year. In the past, SILSSA has been thrilled to be able to offer scholarships of several hundred dollars for ALA Annual, but since this year’s Midwinter conference will be held in Boston, we thought that it would make sense to offer more scholarships, in a smaller amount to Midwinter, to help create a greater Pratt SILS presence at the conference.
The plan, as we propose it is this:
- Offer 8-10 merit-based scholarships to ALA Midwinter 2016 to cover the cost of event registration (approximately $125).
- Help to coordinate travel and housing for SILS students attending ALA Midwinter to help further offset costs.
- Reduce the number of scholarships to ALA Annual 2016 from 5 to 2 or 3.
Before we decide to do this, though, we want to hear from you!
We’ve set up a survey for SILS students to give us feedback about this proposal. Please take a moment to fill it out, and we will discuss the results and conduct a final vote at our next General Meeting on Tuesday, October 6th, 2015.
More information about the ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual Conferences is available on their website and via any of the many Pratt SILS students (including SILSSA Treasurer Maureen McElroy, and President Sarah Hackney), who have attended these events in the past – feel free to ask us!
Thanks for helping to make the start of the 2015-2016 school year great, and we look forward to hearing from you!
P.S. Don’t forget the SILS Student Group co-hosted Librarian Libations is happening TOMORROW, Sept 11, at 6pm at Beauty Bar! We’ll be there, will you?
