by Christian Gray, Southern California Chapter, Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division

Thinking about SLA President Cindy Romaine’s core tenets of Future Ready it is easy to see the convergence between pillars of Future Ready–career agility, alignment and community–and Corporate Social Responsibility/Social Responsibility (CSR/SR).

Your participation in CSR/SR can enhance your skill set and give you an opportunity to take on new roles and responsibilities giving you a more agile career.  CSR/SR is a very high profile matter for many public companies and other institutions. You will find yourself aligned with senior management’s desire to be a socially responsible organization by providing direct support to that department. And as CSR/SR relates to community, well it doesn’t take much effort to explain. That is what CSR/SR should be about, making a real difference in your community or the community that your organization represents.

I have several working hypotheses regarding CSR and SR which I hope to validate over the next few months:

1. Your personal participation in an SR program can increase your quality of life.
2. Your active support of your company CSR goals and objectives can have a positive impact on your career.
3. Being a leader for CSR/SR programs in your organization can lead to greater satisfaction in that role.
4. Professional associations and other business organizations benefit from participation in CSR.
5. Being an advocate and champion for CSR/SR programs can provide direct benefit to your clients, company and partners.

Recently I had a very late night of introspection and an honest evaluation of the many gifts I have in my life and had been aware of my growing need to be active in a community organization. I started researching non-profit organizations and even wrote a few checks. I joined the board of a local arts organization, Create:Fixate, and began to more actively participate in a group for which I had previously been a donor, LA’s BEST. Through that participation I reconnected with former associate Jim Howard, the founder of the Room to Read Los Angeles chapter.

Jim put the book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, in my hands and told me a little more about Room to Read. I was hooked before I even finished reading the book. I initially helped out informally, then facilitated their chapter strategic planning session. After visiting the global offices in San Francisco, I realized that what had begun as a conversation with an old friend had turned into not only an incredible project, but also a great and very personal passion.

My new-found commitment to caring and helping aligned with the broader community of colleagues I work with in the publishing and information industry, including clients, prospects, partners, publishers and even the Special Library Association. I was happy to discover that my commitment was also shared even closer to home, when I was casually speaking to my CEO at Reprints Desk, Peter Derycz, in December 2009 about life outside of work. While sharing my interest in Room to Read he got a funny smile on his face and began telling me about his own experience trekking in Nepal, how he wanted to start a school or library but was concerned about it being sustainable.

So like many good intentions, time passed and Peter’s plans faded until our conversation rekindled his own interest in creating a sustainable, positive change. Over the following weeks, Peter’s personal interest became a corporate initiative and a new partnership was formed between Reprints Desk and Room to Read. The result: basically every time there is a transaction (we deliver scientific articles to some of the largest research and development organizations in the world) Reprints Desk drops a small percentage in the Room to Read bucket. That commitment has, in one quarter, generated enough to fund more than 12 years of girls’ scholarships, including bikes and uniforms as needed, or more than 50 percent of a library, or more than 3,000 new books in local languages.

By integrating corporate social responsibility into Reprints Desk’s DNA, as we grow the company, the financial support and direct impact on children’s lives will grow with us. And that does not even count the impact of the initiative’s growing fan base. Both inside and around Reprints Desk, employees are making a difference around the world. While writing another line of code or providing customer service, our employees know clients are often thrilled to learn that their choice to use our services how has the added value of making the world a better place. As Peter and other senior managers have visited with the world’s largest publishers and they’ve learned about our partnership with Room to Read, many of these publishers are now asking how they can participate.

Over the past several years I’ve presented a series of talks about Career Agility to SLA Chapters and Divisions, sometimes solo, other times partnered with Cindy Hill or Kim Dority. One of the themes in these talks is emulating some of these positive characteristics of corporate leaders.  One key take-away has been that it is not only important to understand our own strengths, but to look at ways to channel our strength into action. I believe we have the means to do just that. To be an effective and valued contributor at your organization, you must consider becoming directly involved in your company’s CSR program. If your organization doesn’t have a CSR program, now is the perfect time to initiate one. Why? You will benefit by increasing your exposure to senior management, you can make a difference outside your enterprise and inside the “cause,” and you’re likely to gain tremendous personal satisfaction from your participation.

I hope this is the beginning of the conversation about CSR/SR and the role of the special librarian/info pro. We had a very engaged group during the SLA CSR Unconference session and we will continue the conversation via the SLA Social Responsibility group just started this week.

With over twenty-years of sales, marketing, business development and public speaking experience, Christian Gray has a unique and diverse perspective of technology, software and information companies. As a Strategic Account Manager for Reprints Desk, Christian has worked directly with many of the world’s largest life science companies including Amgen, Gilead, Genentech, Johnson and Johnson and Allergen, as well as other Fortune 500 Companies including Sony, Disney and Sun Microsystems.
Christian has been an active member of the Special Libraries Association since 2002 and is a past Board member of the Southern California Chapter and recently received an SLA Presidential Citation for his work on Future Ready 365.

Christian has given presentations to numerous SLA Chapters and Divisions and published a series of articles for Searcher Magazine, an Information Today publication on Enterprise Social Software. He has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Business Journal.

by Lark Birdsong, Rocky Mountain Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence, Information Technology Divisions

Musing about: What it takes to be ready for what comes at you in life; whether professional, personal or other…to be ready and not afraid of what will be asked or needed of you.

Thoughts: Having an untethered desire to learn what needs to be learned for the space and time a person is occupying. No limits on learning subject matters, technological innovations, client engagement concepts, new ideas, collaboration efforts or the tantalizing, bewildering at times, unknown; being ready for the future means embracing efforts to acquire and know the future.

Lark Birdsong Moniker
Making ideas and “things” happen with an entrepreneurial spirit. High ratio of productivity to resources executive with the unique capacity to drive business goals in alignment with the owner’s needs, develop new initiatives, and maximize the bottom line…a key leader in an organization with expertise and capabilities in three indispensable areas, information, financial, and entrepreneurial … Formal education with three master’s degrees; informal education of countless and priceless hours of on the job and off the “for credit books” education. Contact her at lark@larkbirdsong.com

by James Kane

In 1930, a paper cup salesman for the Lilly Tulip Cup Company walked into a Walgreen’s Drug Store near 43rd St. and Bowen Ave. in Chicago, IL and changed the world.

That’s a pretty dramatic statement, but it’s true. You see, paper cups were big business in the early part of the 20th century. As scientists and public heath officials warned people about the dangers of drinking from unwashed glassware and shared eating utensils, disposable food and beverage products became all the rage. And, of course, where there is a rage, there is a salesman.

One prime target of these paper cup peddlers were drug stores. After prohibition became law in 1919, the introduction of the soda fountain in American drug stores not only filled the social void caused by the closing of bars and speakeasies, but ushered in the dawn of the soft drink. Egg cremes, Black Cows, and Cherry Phosphates became staples of the new American diet, and the glasses they were served in the target of every paper cup salesman in the country.

All except one.

While most cup vendors made the obvious pitch to the drug store owners and soda fountain managers – no more broken glasses, no more dishwashing, no more risk of spreading disease – our salesman had a different take.  When he first walked into the Walgreen’s off 43rd Street, he knew that he couldn’t make a sale using the same tired  arguments that others had made before him. So, instead of trying to sell the products he brought with him that day, he stood in the back of the room and watched.  More importantly, he learned.

It was just before noon when the store began to fill up with day’s lunch crowd.  He watched as the first ten patrons arrived and took up all the seats at the fountain’s counter. And then watched as one by one the people from the streets entered the store, looked around for a vacant seat, and walked out the door, having never bought a thing. It was all that watching that made everything clear.  He knew what Walgreen’s problem was, and it wasn’t paper cups.

The problem Walgreen’s had was the same problem every soda fountain of its day had.  Not enough space. Everyone wanted a seat, but those who got there first didn’t want to leave.  Without the turnover, the stores were losing sales – and lots of them! Our salesman knew by observing one potential customer after another walk out the door without being served that the answer was not cups, it was lids. He explained to the Walgreen’s manager how he would increase the soda fountain’s sales tenfold without adding even one foot of new counter space. Yes, he would provide them with paper cups, but every one of those cups would come with a lid, and the concept of “take out” was born.

This is a story about the power of insight and the importance of stepping back to see what the real problem is.  We all have our bag of goods – the things we try to sell to others every day. We come ready to explain our value and convince the non-believers of our importance, only to be left dumbfounded that they just don’t get it. The tried and true paper cup pitch is “we can SAVE you money.” The insightful one is “we can MAKE you money.”

We all fall into the trap of trying to sell what we have instead of selling what others need. The first requires doing nothing more than what you have always done, the second demands that you step back and understand what the real problem is. Being “future ready” is not only about knowing how to go forward, it’s about knowing when to step back. Knowing how to put yourself in the shoes of others and figuring out what they truly need and want.  What your boss needs.  What your institution and organization needs.  What your client and customer needs.  What your industry needs.  Sometimes you may have the solution in your bag.  Sometimes you will need to order lids.

Insight is not a magical gift we are born with. It is something we develop – by listening, by watching, by learning, and by practicing empathy. It takes some time to get good at it, but the results are definitely worth the effort.  They certainly were for our paper cup salesman. He made the sale to Walgreens, but practicing insight would bring him even  greater rewards. Standing in the back of the room and watching what was really going on gave birth to the take-out business, and forever changed the course of Ray Kroc’s life. Applying what he learned at the Walgreen’s drug store in 1930 would influence his decision to buy a small restaurant in San Bernadino, California 20 years later from brothers Dick and Mac McDonald. The rest, as they say, is history.

Merging the worlds of business, neuroscience, and behavioral psychology, James Kane is one of the leading researchers and consultants in the science of loyalty and the role it plays in human relationships and the communities we form.Kane makes the case that loyalty is a complex human emotion and a fundamental part of our human nature. When an organization or individual demonstrates those loyalty-building behaviors, they can develop relationships that will last a lifetime and result in unwavering and unlimited support.

SLA has retained the services of James Kane for a 12-month pilot program where he will audit and assess one Chapter’s current relationships, consult with and train Chapter leadership, and develop and implement loyalty strategies that will have broad applicability to other SLA units. He is the closing keynote presentation at the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia.  For more information see JamesKane.com

by Susan Fifer Canby, Convener, ENCORE: Retired Members Caucus

If you are fifty-plus years, retirement has doubtless been on your mind, unless you’ve already transitioned to life beyond full-time employment.  And if you’ve focused on the dictionary definition of retirement — “to withdraw oneself from business, active service, or public life; to disappear, to take out of circulation; withdrawn or secluded; difficult to be seen, known, or discovered” — you might wonder why anyone would even consider it!

Thinking about retirement is really about reinventing – about finding the proper balance in life.  I know I don’t want or intend to work full-time for any one organization again, because I would like more balance and diversity in my life than was possible working full-time (even for National Geographic Society!).  How about you?  Where do you stand on the question of how you want to be spending your time in the next chapter of your life?

SLA President Cindy Romaine is encouraging us all to be future-ready.  Part of that preparation is thinking about that next chapter and considering how SLA might help with the transition.  Many of your colleagues are preparing for or have launched their encore careers.  Many of us have reached the precipice and discovered life is a cycle of beginnings and endings.  As our work as we knew it ended, whole new beginnings started.

As a growing cohort within society, we share the opportunity to work together to improve the balance in our life AND to find our new path within SLA. A little work on your part will enable you to engage creatively.

Plan to be at SLA Conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday, June 14 to attend Stephen Abram’s session on demographics of our cohort and ideas for the future. Stephen, a contributing author to the book “Boomers & Beyond”(ALA Editions 2010), will describe some of the expected changes in the post-post WW2 generation retired cohort.  What technologies do we prefer – or reject?  What will be our information and reading choices? What are the opportunities for a full and long retirement?

We have created a wiki, http://wiki.sla.org – choose ENCORE featuring stories of some who have already started new chapters and their tips for the rest of us. You will also see recommended readings. You can add your own story, advice or questions on the ENCORE blog or respond to this blog. You can ask questions and talk to your ENCORE cohort on the listserv encore@lists.sla.org.

Help prepare for your future, by joining ENCORE for only $12 – which can be added to your SLA membership dues if you call Headquarters Michelle Garvin at SLA Headquarters 1.703.647.4937 or email her mgarvin@sla.org.

See you in Philadelphia!

Best, Susan Fifer Canby, Convener, ENCORE: Retired Members Caucus

Susan Fifer Canby retired in 2010 and was named Vice President, emeritus, at National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. She applied more than 34 years of information management experience to shape and direct the Society’s libraries and information services. She served on the SLA Board as Chapter Cabinet Chair and is a past president of SLA’s DC Chapter, the DC Library Association, and CAPCON Board. She was recognized by SLA in 2001 as the Innovator of the Year, received the SLA Factiva Leadership Award in 2005, and her library was recognized by SLA as a “Center of Excellence” for management.

by Ned Potter, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management Division
by Laura Woods, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management and Legal Divisions

Libraries and information professionals are stuck in a bit of an echo chamber. We spend way too much time talking to one another, and not nearly enough time talking to the potential users. Potential users who have no idea really what a (future ready) library does, but who would probably come and visit if they did. Some people use an analogy of ‘floating voters’ to describe those currently indifferent to libraries, but I think our offer has changed so much and people’s perceptions of libraries are so far behind, these are people who don’t even realise there’s an election on…

Classic examples of our preaching to the converted often come when the profession or the industry is criticised from outside. When Seth Godin or someone from the national press puts us down, our first urge seems to be to find another librarian to commiserate with. This doesn’t do anything, not really – it’s great to engage the library community by blogging about it, but library blogs tend to be read by other librarians –  we also need to engage the people who heard all the bad stuff about libraries in the first place. We need to fight back in public. In short, we need to take greater control of the narrative arc concerning libraries, and stop letting other people write our story for us.

The presentation below is one used by myself and Laura Woods when we talk about the echo chamber – follow the Prezi through to find out more about the concept, about how it impacts negatively on libraries, and to see some ideas for marketing libraries outside of the echo chamber in future.

Ned Potter works in the field of digitisation at an academic library in the UK; he was named as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for 2011, and is about to attend the SLA Annual Conference in Philly as a winner of the SLA-Europe Early Career Conference Award. His blog and other presentations can be found at www.thewikiman.org.
Laura Woods is the current Webmaster and Bulletin Editor for the Europe Chapter. Her blog, Organising Chaos can be read at http://woodsiegirl.wordpress.com/.

By Sean Smith, Maryland and Washington DC Chapters, Legal and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions

Libraries that are increasing their online presence—building information portals, intranets and other online resources—frequently come up against a new kind of challenge: How to effectively drive usage of online resources? This can be especially challenging for libraries that have limited marketing resources or experience.

Believe it or not, this is the exactly the dilemma that Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin faced just seven years ago when they founded Facebook on a shoestring budget.

I just published an article on The Huffington Post entitled, How Facebook Really Won the Social Media War: Viral Marketing Lessons from The Social Network. The article examines how a couple of college students, with almost no resources, marketing budget or staff launched and built the most successful social networking Web site ever. More importantly, the article demonstrates the viral marketing lessons that information professionals can learn from watching “The Social Network.”

The lessons include:

• Why having the right email lists is critically important to a successful launch;
• Why it is more effective to reach “influencers” or trendsetters than to try to reach the entire universe;
• How one email got more than 5,000 to register for Facebook in the first two weeks; and
• What time-tested marketing strategy is the real secret of Facebook’s phenomenal success?

Click here to read the full article.

Driving usage of online resources is by no means easy, but as “The Social Network” shows, with some planning, patience and perseverance, information professionals can learn to effectively drive usage to online resources. However, most SLA members have the added advantage of marketing to an internal audience with shared business objectives. The challenge, therefore, becomes how to identify specific audiences within the organization and find clever and fresh ways to capture their attention and engage them.

I encourage you to use this forum to share stories about any clever and fresh marketing ideas that you have tried to boost online information resource usage. Please leave a comment below or email me.

Sean Smith is Director of Marketing for InfoDesk, Winner: 2011 CODiE Award for “Best Business Information Resource“. InfoDesk specializes in information management solutions that help integrate, deliver and share content resources more quickly, cost effectively and securely. Follow Sean Smith on Twitter or email him directly with questions or comments at sean.smith@infodesk.com.

by Cynthia Eastman, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Engineering and Environmental & Resource Mgmt Divisions

We as individuals need to be future ready but so does our support structure, in other words, SLA. We talk about attracting members from outside our traditional venues but if they don’t see any division or caucus activity that is in their line of work how can we ask them to join? If we want to attract members from non-traditional fields, we need to identify those potential fields and think about what SLA should have in place to attract those people. One approach would be to identify say three fields where we think we can attract new members and then set up a new forum for those fields. Obviously these forums won’t be like divisions but they could grow into divisions over time. Perhaps they are just a few existing members getting together for discussion sessions at the annual meeting. Yes, we already have caucuses that do this but I suggest we do away with the formal caucus formation process for these forums. Perhaps it’s as simple as asking for a few volunteers to lead a discussion and then setting up a web page where discussion notes and other information can be posted.

Switching to the opposite direction, is it time to look at de-structuring some of our current divisions to help us attract and retain active volunteers? At every conference I hear stories about the difficulties some divisions have filling Board positions and supporting conference sessions. On top of that are the burn-out stories where someone steps up to be Division chair and then disappears from volunteer roles after their term ends (or even sooner). Can we come up with a “small division” option with fewer positions to worry about and a lower number of sessions to plan? Yes, I know that divisions aren’t required to fill all positions or to do the maximum number of sessions allowed. But many people are intimidated away before we get them to a point where they understand the option to wrestle things down to a manageable level.

The keynote speaker at this year’s Leadership Summit showed that “Opportunities to Gain Leadership Experience” is not one of the aspects of association membership that is rated high by non-volunteers. If we want to turn those folks into volunteers, we need to think about new options for engagement. Less structure and fewer procedural requirements might be one way to go.

Cynthia is Corporate Librarian at Kennedy Jenks Consultants, an environmental engineering firm in San Francisco. Prior to Kennedy Jenks, Cynthia was Director of Information Services as Keyser Marston Associates, a real estate consulting firm. She is program planner for the Engineering Division for the Philly and Chicago annual conferences and has served as Chair of the Environment and Resource Management Division.

by John Creighton

Community engagement is a public sector buzzword. Engagement is hailed as a key strategy to help keep institutions such as public libraries relevant now and in the future. But was does community engagement mean? And, more important, what is the purpose of community engagement?

Community engagement often is translated as a set of activities and/or events. People attend book readings, film screenings, a community dialogue. Attendance at these events becomes the purpose of engagement as well as the measure of success.

These types of activities are often worthwhile. But, does hosting an event, even if well attended, really make a library more relevant in the community? Is a meeting room with ample seating capacity an irreplaceable community asset? Can no other organization besides a library host a book reading, film screening or discussion?

To discover the full potential of civic engagement we must look beyond activities and set aside attendance as the primary metric of success.

Richard Harwood, founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, offers a definition for the purpose of community engagement that elevates engagement’s potential to new heights. Harwood challenges organizations to pursue community engagement as a means to improve the civic health of the community.

Let me state that again. The purpose of community engagement is to improve the civic health of the community.

What are some of the elements of a civically healthy community? The Harwood Institute’s research identifies factors such as these:

• Diverse layers of leadership at all levels of the community.
• A strong set of links and connections between diverse groups of people.
• Boundary spanning organizations and leaders willing to hold up a mirror to the community.
• A culture of constructive dialogue.

Embracing the idea that the purpose of community engagement is to improve the community’s civic health challenges engagement organizers to consider a different set of questions. The same activities are viewed in a different light.

A library team, for instance, might think differently about film screenings. The relevant questions become:

• How can we use film screenings to cultivate more diverse leadership at more levels of the community?
• How will the film screenings help people of different backgrounds forge strong connections?
• In what ways will the film screenings challenge people to look in the mirror and engage in constructive dialogue?

The ability to achieve these goals becomes the priority. Attendance becomes a secondary goal. These types of questions might even lead a library team to look outside its own buildings as the best place to show films and host conversations.

The measures of success change, too. Gatherings of a small group of people who are from diverse parts of the community may be deemed more successful than a well-attended event of like-minded library patrons.

An institution that is able to contribute to the civic health of its community – rather than just host an entertaining event – over time is far more relevant.

To what extent is your organization improving the civic health of your community?

John Creighton, a Longmont, Colorado leadership consultant, writes on community life and public leadership at johncr8on.com. He can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook. John also is a member of The Harwood Institute’s national faculty.

by Victoria Harriston, Washington DC Chapter

Innovation, always on my mind, sitting in traffic and yes even in my sleep. Why? Because I know that no matter what our Research Center is doing there’s always room for improvement, to be better than we are. Nothing earth-shattering here, just a few thoughts and musings on innovations that have given our Library/Research Center greater visibility from the top down, fostered increased demand for our expertise and services and kicked the value of our contributions to the organization up more than a couple of notches.

One of the best ways to keep your finger on the pulse of the organization and really get to know your stakeholders is to start a Liaison Program. No huge start-up effort and the rewards are a win-win for everyone. Know what’s going on within your organization, recognize and seize business opportunities.

Every librarian is a business entrepreneur. You’d be amazed how forming partnerships opens innovation doors. Partnership with our Staff Development Programs office gave us the financial support for our successful training program.

Advocate for your stakeholders. If your organization publishes reports organize public Forum events and invite internal staff contributors to speak. Spend time learning about programs or events within your organization to get the library involved. We regularly participate in our Graduate Fellows program. Showcase library value, publish an Impact Report (saved project staff 20 research hours, proposal research contributed to new project funding, citation analysis validated key report recommendations).

Gather those publisher backfile collections and create an Intellectual Heritage Vault. Innovation includes not reinventing the wheel (if you don’t have to!). Use publisher online tutorials for databases, use your Delicious guides as classroom instructor tools.

Victoria Harriston is Manager, at the George E. Brown, Jr. Research Center, National Academy of Sciences. Her 35 year career includes several management positions in special, corporate and academic libraries and serving for 2-years as Public Relations, News Bureau Manager for a telecommunications company.

by Denise Mc Iver

I’m still in I-school, so I’m new to the information profession.  Prior to going back to school to pursue my MLIS, I worked as a publicist in the music and entertainment industry for over a decade. Upon reflection, there are some lessons from that world that might apply to becoming Future Ready.

First of all, it’s true:  Publicists ARE control freaks (in the best sense, I should add) because that’s what we’re paid to be.  We control the public perception of our clients’ “brand” and we’re the “keepers” of our clients’ dreams and goals – whether they want to secure the cover of Rolling Stone, perform on a segment of The Today Show, or get ranked in the Top Ten on any Billboard chart.  So for me, a former flack in the music business, being Future Ready is all about branding.

Some lessons I’ve learned in my former professional life include…

Begin With the End In Mind: Publicists always begin a new campaign with this as our mantra.  For us, Christmas arrives in July.  If our client’s new album is being released in the fourth quarter, we spend a great deal of energy doing something called “set up” beforehand.  For information professionals and librarians, it might mean doing some setup by taking an audit of our skills, experience, and passion (a key ingredient!). We can then use these as springboards to ‘futurize’ ourselves.

Know Who You Are: Publicists understand that their recording artists have a public persona and the music they create (hopefully) extends this.  Lady Gaga gets this; had she made a boring entrance at the Grammy Awards a few weeks ago, it would have been clear that she wasn’t “on message” and her public would have been surprised, and possibly lost. Love her or hate her – she’s clear about her brand:  One-Who-Pushes-The-Envelope-Off-The-Table.  I’m not suggesting we become Gaga-ized, but it is vitally important that WE define ourselves first so that we can communicate who we are and what our value is to our various stakeholders and constituencies.  Capture the vision, promote it, and remember to stay on message.

“Grow Some Feet”: There’s nothing remotely glamorous about doing a bus tour of any kind (trust me on this!) unless your client is Mick Jagger or Beyoncé. If you want to sell albums, you’ve got to tour – it’s how you build awareness. The same goes for information professionals. I’m not one to sit behind a desk all day, so I hit the “road” (actually the hallways) and do short “drop-ins.”  I let my stakeholders know I’m a co-collaborator with them, and these drop-ins give me the opportunity to anticipate and determine what their needs are, possibly before they’ve even had the chance to think about them themselves.  This is how I make myself visible and sell my value.

Summing it all up:  After the press screening of Black Swan, actress Mila Kunis, who was strapped into five-inch high Christian Louboutin stilettos, expressed how exhausting and painful it was to wear them throughout the long evening. She also remarked how grateful and amazed she was that her publicist had the presence of mind to bring along a comfortable pair of slippers for her to change into as the evening wore on.

Now that’s a lesson in being Future Ready.

Denise L. Mc Iver is a recipient of an IMLS scholarship and attending the MLS program at St. John’s University.  She anticipates graduating in May. She’s a student member of the NY Chapter of SLA.