by Stella Ota

Happy 2013! January is the transition month for a number of Division leadership positions. All current PAM leaders, including Committee Chairs, Committee Members, and Annual Conference Moderators can be found on the Current Staff Listing page on the PAM website: http://pam.sla.org/manual/staff/current/. The listing of previous committee leaders is also linked off the current staff webpage. A huge thank-you to all the PAM volunteers, current and past, who have contributed to the greater good (and especially to webmaster Robin Dasler for making all the edits)! We are not a large division but we do a lot and make it count. Kudos to all the volunteers who make PAM a great division to be a part of! If you are interested doing more on PAM programs and endeavors, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Speaking of transitions, your new 2013 PAM Executive Board is:

Chair, Stella Ota
Chair-Elect, Barbara Kern
Past Chair, Nisa Bakkalbasi
Secretary, Jeffra Bussmann
Treasurer, Michael Chesnes

Congratulations to newly-elected Barbara and Jeffra! As a reminder, the Chair-Elect is elected every Fall and serves a three-year term cycling through the positions of Chair-Elect, then Chair, then Past-Chair. The Secretary and Treasurer have staggered two-year terms, so one or the other is elected each Fall.

Many thanks to Nisa for her steady leadership as Chair during 2012 as well as congratulations on a very successful year. Standing ovations to Ruth Kneale who steps down after her three years as Chair-Elect/Chair/Past-Chair and to Elizabeth (Beth) Brown who completes her two years as Secretary. I hope we will continue to benefit from their experience and advice!

Next up in February is the SLA 2013 Leadership Summit in Dallas, TX. The Chair and Chair-Elect attend to represent PAM at the Division and Joint Cabinet meetings and to bring back updates about SLA’s directions as an association. The Chair-Elect also attends to begin program planning for the 2014 conference. In addition, this year, the Leadership Summit organizers have invited PAM to speak about our strategic plan, in particular, how we went about it as well as lessons learned. Jeffra Bussmann as Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee will make the presentation. Plan on reading more about PAM’s strategic directions in a future Bulletin article. Meanwhile, the updated and approved PAM 2012-2015 Strategic Plan can be found on the PAM website: http://pam.sla.org/files/strategic-plan/.

Also coming soon in February is access to annual conference registration, hotel information, and online planner for SLA 2013 in San Diego to be held June 8-12. Our Fundraising Committee members Kiem Ta and Donna Thompson have been hard at work, contacting sponsors and confirming support for our conference events. The economic climate is still unsettled for attendees as well as exhibitors, so the commitment from our sponsors as greatly appreciated. I hope you are seeing similar support from your organizations as well. For more information about the PAM events planned for SLA 2013, check out the article that appears further in this Bulletin.

Meanwhile, I hope warm and sunny thoughts about June in San Diego keep the winter chills at bay!